After so many years, My father and I met.
We sat, not as father and child but as strangers with history.
There were no flood of tears, just open wounds and silence thick as the afternoon.
I spoke about my experience in his house, with his wife, with him.
He heard the words that were coming out of my mouth but he was not listening. He spoke in circles, turned the past into something gentle, something half. Like it didn’t happen.
He twisted truths with practised ease, like a man who needed to convince himself that it wasn’t as bad as I was saying.
And I let him. I let it slide. For the first time, I noticed the weight he’s been trying to hide. Noticed the regrets that had been weighing heavily on his heart. He carries it all with so much pride.
He had missed his children. He had missed my presence. He had missed milestones in our lives. He had lost the privilege of being a father to us. A Guide. A shield. An emotional support. He had lost the privilege of being a father to his children.
There was no anger left in me, no need to fight. Just pity curling in the light.
For all we were, all we lost,
The love he gambled, the years it cost all of us
There was not going to be closure from that conversation. That’s what I hoped for. And yet I let it slide because what I did not realise,
Not only had he not been a father to us but he also was not able to be a grandfather to his first and only grandchild. The years without us, were his punishment. And punished, he had been enough.
It was so much space between us, so we tried to bridge it by sitting across the table, not as strangers with history,
But as Father and child, moving forward.
One day at a time 