Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The e-mail that preceded my Father's final good-bye

Yesterday I posted my father's final letter to me, today I will post the email that caused him to lash out so.  There are a few in-between emails, but the this email from me to him, and his return letter with his award seem to be the most comprehensive in telling the story.

"My children are free to interact with you anyway they wish.  They are children of broken homes. They can handle a little mud slinging between baldy behaving adults.   Do you think I would encourage them to break ties with anyone because of my petty arguments?  If you have a concern regarding my children, you need to not assume anything and ask them directly why they have or have not chosen to so something. Or shall I follow your logic and blame you for ______ un-friending me?   

Is sure is interesting that one day I send you an invite to my Green Housing page and the next day you mock environmentalists in one of your group think emails.  Coincidence? Perhaps.

Now I am to believe that there are 40 young people seeking heartfelt advice from you on whether or not to pursue finding a parent and opening themselves up for all sorts of heartache, the possibility of being rejected again, and/or possibly finding a love they cannot imagine and with the knowledge and insight you have had and instead you put all those amazing lessons and perspectives aside and choose to give them the advice to not expect Demi-gods for parents as a board-cast message on Facebook?You the man of 1 million words summed it all up with that?

I am sorry, I cannot go where you are asking me to go.  But if what you are saying is true, than it is all the better for you to post your advice and thoughts freely without the worry of how I might perceive such good hearted intentions.  Your message will be all the better if your audience is all of the same opinion and there really is no point in having me in the audience.  And if you have ever read my posts you will already know its a very catered message. 

I really don't wish you any harm, any bad thoughts, any extra weight on an already heavy heart.  I wish we could run through the fields of gold again and love and hope that I might somehow be able to join you at a Christmas dinner (or maybe that was only my hope).   I understand now the impossibilities of my childhood fantasies and I get it.  

And I get that it's not personal.  You and yours have customs I don't understand, you pull names out of hats and buy each other gifts and most likely never call each other to say happy birthday or merry Christmas or God bless at Easter.  And I get for five years now I have waited and hoped to be included in activities that are not your activists but rather they are [your wife's] activities and I really really do get it.  

But here's the catch, I can't imagine how you get it. How are you okay with the way things are? Now I don't fault you for being okay with it, but I just don't see you as being fatherly if you are cable of carrying on like you do.  I haven't understood since that cruise you took in 2008.  And I know it wasn't your cruise, it was [your wife's] and I get the look of confusion in everyone's eyes as I strain to validate my complaint.  I don't belong on [your wife's] cruise, not than and not now and not ever. But again here is the catch, why do you go?   If [my husband] bought tickets to a cruise and everyone except one of my children were invited, I would be confused and hurt that all my kids weren't invited. And I wouldn't deny him passage or anyone else for that matter, but there's just no way I could go. And that is the difference between you and me.   

You see, I honestly thought after you told everyone about me that YOU would start including me.  

So tell me the truth, if it was [your favorite daughter] who was excluded, would you go?  

Now the cruise is long gone and its not worth talking about except for the sake that I should have known way back then that for you and mostly for everyone else that nothing would change.  Your entire family wants to so dearly to hold on to traditions that pre-date my arrival into the family and there just noway meaningful change will ever happen without the consensus of the group. 

Now to clarify, I'm not angry about this, but you can't have it both ways. Either I'm your daughter in every sense of the way or I am not.  The same is true for my role as a sister, I cannot do the half-thing, blame it [on my maternal sister] if you must, she forbade me to use the word half since as long as I can remember.  

Now for the record, I'm not saying good-bye, I gave up trying to say god-bye a long time ago.  

If it helps you to understand, I fell apart when I read your words.  I had out of state clients in town and with this crazy market I was on about day 17 of not having a day off with the working day lasting from dawn until dusk and no I don't get to have a quiet lunch break where I can collect my thoughts and regroup.  I just had to find a home for this family before they left town on Friday, and I had to do this when I'm exhausted in a market that is a fierce as you can possibly imagine and I am supposed to do it with a smile on my face.  And than I read your post and its like a wreaking ball on a fragile building.  (This analogy is not meant to imply I am over-sensitive) 

I have asked you not to email me because I check my email as part of my job and it's too much to have little bombs of nasty comments going off in my email.  I use Facebook for work and if you ever liked my fan pages or talked to [a family member] about how I use Facebook you would understand its not all fun and games for me, I actually use it as a tool and I'm very good at turning my efforts on Facebook into money to support my family.  

Our paths will cross again and again, I truly hope above all things that when they do cross it might be a pleasant passing where each person wishes the best for the other without impossible expectations on each other.

That being said, the situation is impossible, and my only regret is my inability to have accepted that as fact years and years ago."


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