It May Not Have Happened This Way

It may not have really happened this way, but at this point it almost doesn’t matter. There is a picture in my mind of the real story, the true story. And as far as I am concerned, it started the day…

… I lost my father.

Before I was born, he was lost - spiritually. Maybe mentally. Whether he was ever found or not, I cannot know; I can only pray that, at some point, he was. Mother was a woman of many dark secrets locked away tightly behind knowing eyes and a voice that would never speak truth. Like a jigsaw puzzle, my life had missing pieces that would only be explained if I found my father. But he was nowhere to be found. Not by me, anyway.

Did he die alone when and where mother said he did? Or did he live on in obscurity, only a shadowy figure of a man, striving for avoidance and non-disclosure? Did he even want to be found? Did he know that I missed him? Did he miss me?

I needed to know.

The picture in my mind of the real story… he was standing near me, out of sight, when I was sitting on his false gravesite. It was all a lie. That ‘fateful’ phone call was a farse. We were eating popcorn and waiting… and waiting. Suddenly, the phone rang and we were told that he was found in the basement of an Episcopal church… dead.

So, who sent the holiday cards with the strange signature – a question mark over an exclamation point – that mother would not tell us about? She knew who sent them. Twenty-six years after my sister and I had received them, mother was still a woman sworn to secrecy. Her eyes told the truth, but my life was so cloistered in secrecy and by our nomadic life that I was sure that I would never understand.

But I knew. Years later, I figured it out. He had reached out from the shadows when he sent us those cards. He wanted us to know the truth. He was watching us from a distance. While he could not reveal his dark secrets, he wanted us to know he was still out there.

Poor daddy. The war must have confused him. He didn’t have the Truth to guide him. Mother didn’t know the Truth either. She always looked for love and forgot that her True Love was nearer to her than her earthly romances. She never looked up. She never received what her True Love wanted to give her.

Daddy did some terrible, but not unforgivable, things. If only he knew that he could be forgiven. His family did not know The Truth either. They never spoke of mercy or grace.

Where could he have heard? Perhaps before he died in prison, someone came to speak with him, or maybe he found the only Book that could explain life to him. It was not meant that I should have more details than those that were revealed to me by my forever-Father.

I was born to a single, divorced mother. Daddy tried to take my life so that I would not suffer the depth of despair that he had experienced, or at least that is what I like to think. Or did he consider me a threat? His aim was off just a bit and my life was spared.

And I love him. Just the way he is… or was.

If only he knew.