I've been watching DVD's of old TV shows for the last few days while I scan some boxes of old photographs I found in the house, and one of the episodes tonight sparked some deep thought. It was an episode about the end of a relationship, and the anger and betrayal that sometimes accompany that end. The heroine was angry, and quite acerbic in her anger, fuming that her ex didn't deserve forgiveness, and one of her friends turned to her and said something that stuck with me:
"Forgiveness is an act of compassion, you know. We don't give them forgiveness because they deserve it, we grant them forgiveness because they need it."
Perhaps it struck me so deeply because at that moment I was scanning old pictures of my father - the one person in my life whose transgressions I have never been able to forgive, and with whom I no longer have a relationship.
I have struggled all my life to have a relationship with my dad - my parents divorced when I was an infant, and have been unable to reconcile into civility in the years since. I don't have any memories of them together, and have very few pictures of them, although family lore holds that they were very deeply in love, which turned to poison when they couldn't work it out between them.
My dad's presence was pretty sporadic throughout my childhood - looking back as an adult I realize that he was working through some pretty big issues, and just wasn't able to step up to the responsibilities that came along with a wife and two children. He would get it together sometimes, and we'd spend time together and have a blast, and then he'd leave again and it would be back to normal.
Luckily, my dad's family maintained a strong presence in our lives, giving my mom alot of help and making sure that we didn't lose touch even though my dad wasn't around. They were, and still are, super fabulous, and as a result I am much closer to my dad's side of the family than I am to my mom's side. My mom was, and is, amazing, and somehow managed to hold it all together, a teenager with two kids, no marketable skills and no higher education. She's come a long way since I was small, and though we sometimes spark, she's an incredible woman who I admire very much.
I can't, unfortunately, say the same about my dad. His presence has never been constant in my life, but it has been powerful. My dad is an incredibly charismatic man, a good time Charlie that always has a joke at the ready and has never met a stranger. Jovial and mostly amiable, it is rare that his temper shows, though it is legendary in it's ferocity. He's also highly intelligent, borderline genius, with a tendency toward paranoia and conspiracy theories. I can't say that he's really accomplished anything in his life, and none of his children currently speak to him, but he has shown me very clearly through his life all of the things that I do not want to be.
I don't have much pride in my dad, and precious little admiration, but I have resentments aplenty. I resented him as a child for not being there when I needed him, not being the dad to hold my hand on the first day of school, the dad who I could talk to about boys, the dad to threaten my dates if they didn't bring me home safely (not that I dated!). I resented him in high school for making me feel unwelcome in his house - thank God for my stepmother, though I didn't appreciate her until years later. I resented him in college for never coming to visit me, for never telling me that he was proud of me for getting into Georgetown, though I was the first person ever in my family to go to college. I resented him when I got married, since he refused to come to my wedding because he didn't like the ethnicity of my husband, whom he had never met. I resented him at my divorce, since some of the things he had said when I told him I was getting married turned out to be right. I resented him for leaving my stepmother just days after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, for the woman who introduced him to my mother. I resented him at my cousin Danielle's graduation from high school, since he didn't have the courage to come and talk to me, though I had driven up to NY from DC in order to be there. I resented him at my little brother's graduation from high school, when he made my 17 year old brother walk across the stadium to talk to him, so that he wouldn't have to approach the bleachers where me, my stepmother and my stepsister were all sitting. I could go on, but I have come to realize that they all stem from the same source: shame and fear.
I am ashamed that my dad is not a more honest being, not only with himself but with those around him. I am ashamed that he has passed up almost every opportunity to be a better man, and that he has allowed the adversity he has faced in his life to defeat him, and turn him into an angry, bitter shell. My father is 54 years old, and when I saw him at my brother's graduation two years ago, he looked 70. I am ashamed that the incredible promise he holds as a human being has been wasted, and that the world is poorer for it.
But mostly, I am afraid. I am afraid that in the ways that count, I am just like my father. I have his coloring. I have his temper. I have his intelligence, and as I grow older I have discovered a tendency towards bitterness in myself that I am fighting as hard as I can. I look just like my mother, but deep down, I hold the parts of my father that I scorn the most. He began as we all do...
...but somewhere along the way he lost his focus and became a angry, twisted man. How do I prevent that from happening to me? Will I recognize it, if it begins?
The older I get, the more I miss my dad. Or more accurately, the more I miss the man my dad might have been. Every day that passes is one more day that he won't be the man I've always hoped he would be, and the father I needed him to be. I've been trying, for the last year or so, to bring myself to reconcile with my dad - we haven't spoken in about 15 years, and I'm not even really sure where he is. I worry though, that by the time I'm ready, it might be too late. I feel like it's a fragile balance - I'm not ready to talk to him, but I somehow feel as if time is running out and every passing moment weighs heavy on my mind.
Forgiveness is sometimes defined as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived difference or mistake, and ceasing to demand punishment or restitution. To hear it defined today as an act of compassion shook me a little - I'm not particularly known for my compassion, and in fact I often think my biggest flaw is that I lack too much of it. It also made me think a bit, to hear that sometimes we don't grant compassion because someone deserves it, but because they need it. I wonder if, instead of my dad needing the forgiveness, if I'm not the one that needs to grant it?
I don't know that I can reconcile all of my resentments towards my dad, or if we'll ever reach a place where we can have a relationship again. I don't even know that I'm ready to try and give my dad the forgiveness we both might need, but I think I'm ready to think about it, and that's farther than I've ever been before.
