Two Fathers. No Father At All.

And the question of forgiveness 🌿MEMOIR

Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.com (edited )

I had two fathers. I had no father at all. My first father was a young soldier, an alcoholic, who walked away from my mother and me when I was born, and was never heard of again. My second father, also a heavy drinker, was a nice man when he was sober, but he rarely was sober, and could not contain his rage and disappointment. They were not bad men, not mean nor cruel nor malicious; neither intended to cause hurt or despair. They were simply men who never grew up, two men who never learned what it meant to be a man. Certainly, neither understood that becoming a father was a commitment to protect and nurture a child.

I see children with their fathers in the park, walking hand in hand, sitting together or playing ball, and I think about my fathers. I don’t resent them, I am just sorry that fatherly affection and security was a missing piece in the jigsaw of my life. I am sorry, too, for the pain that they, themselves, had to live with. How hard it must have been, going through life knowing you’d abandoned your wife and child! How tragic for a man to admit that a bottle of cheap wine was more valuable to him than his children!

I have, for the most part, forgotten these two fathers. Their ghosts have never haunted my adult life or impeded my success. But I admit I have no forgiveness for them. After all, they chose not to take responsibility for their insobriety. Still, it would be such a gift to myself if I could forgive their desertion or dereliction.

Dick Lourie wrote a touching poem of questions about forgiving our fathers that, to me, rings absolutely true. I still read it once in a while to remind myself that my experience is not rare. I am only one out of millions of children who have not known the comfort of a father’s arms.

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How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?

How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.

Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?

Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?

If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

By Dick Lourie; adapted by Sherman Alexie for his film Smoke Signals. It was originally published in a longer version titled “Forgiving Our  Fathers” in a book of poems titled Ghost Radio. Hanging Loose Press, 1998