Originally published in August 2022.
CW: Parent loss, I guess.
I’ve been writing on the internet for ten years and I’ve never once written about my father. While part of me was probably keeping things to myself out of fear, the other part of me really didn’t give a shit. I don’t actually think he used the internet and I tossed his last name in the trash like Amazon packaging long ago so I doubt he would have ever come across my work, but there’s something about the fact that he’s dead now that makes this easier.
My biological father died sometime in July, I think from Covid. I don’t actually know when or how he died because he wasn’t found and his next of kin (not me by the way) wasn’t notified until weeks later. Before you feel sad about this, I can assure you his death was extremely reflective of the life he chose. Also, condolences are not necessary. My stepfather, who I love and who loves me and makes himself an actual part of my life every day, by choice, is alive and well. My stepfather texts me about inclement weather and new wildlife he spots on the back porch. I have what I need.
The person who died, contributor of half my DNA, who decided to create me and then about ten years later slowly, but very steadily, pretend I don’t exist—that’s who’s gone. The last time we spoke was my 21st birthday, when he called and then never called again without any explanation of any kind. It was a pleasant phone call, the kind you get on a birthday. No reason at all for it to be the last. Could I have pursued a relationship with him? Sure. But six months later my grandmother, my favorite person, died and he didn’t feel any need to check on his daughter. It was the last entry in a very long list of disappointments, dismissals, and general rage-inducing frustration that for two decades I couldn’t just have a father, I had to have a problem instead. It’s also when I decided my entire life would feel better without him in it. I was right. A weight was lifted and I’ve never regretted my logical choice that followed his unexplainable one. I could have pursued a relationship with my father but I was his child and that was his fucking job.
My biological parents divorced when I was six, the standard late-80’s every-other-weekend-and-holidays structure ensued. If you think this is the only time I’ll write about that bullshit on the internet you are out of your tree. My memories of my father post-divorce are minimal and always involved spending a lot of money on entertainment like toys, bowling, mini golf, arcades, fun stuff like that from a child’s perspective. But once you grow up and realize how much more money he could have given to my primary parent who was expected to raise me 90% of the time on $200 child support per month, per kid, you start to feel sick to your stomach. I shared a bedroom with my younger brother from age 10–17 and only in adulthood did I realize how much his neglect contributed to that. I know how much apartments cost now, certainly the ones on the edge of the school district where we lived. A couple hundred more a month, which he had—I saw it—could have given me and my brother even the smallest amount of privacy and dignity through puberty. Instead we both have the shame of never wanting anyone to come over to our house, among other memories.
For the most part I remember loving being a kid with my father. Meals were junk food, I could stay up late enough to watch In Living Color, and we played board games together which I have literally never once done with my mother. I have wonderfully fun and fond memories of my dad when I was a small child. I loved him very much, the way a child typically would. The implicit trust in our parents, in their love, is a motherfucker when you realize how they’ve used it to get away with being an absolute shit.
The thing that set my fatherless future in motion was, by and large, a choice he made when I was 13. He chose not to attend my Bat Mitzvah. I had studied for nine months in preparation, I didn’t “split” it with another kid because my Jewish community was small. I did the whole Megillah, fucking literally, by myself. And instead of memories of accomplishment and pride, when I think of my Bat Mitzvah, I think of this: He didn’t tell me in advance he wasn’t coming.He strung me along.(Sound familiar, single friends?)He never admitted that he was too much of a coward to be in a room with my mom’s side of the family or that he simply didn’t care enough about me to show up.Instead, he left a 13-year-old child alone on a stage for two hours on Friday night and four hours on Saturday morning leading 300 people in religious services while constantly scanning the crowd for a father that never showed up.There’s a part of the service where parents say a Hebrew blessing over their children, but mine had to be delivered by my grandfather.I almost—almostbroke down crying during this prayer.People thought it was because it was a really beautiful, emotional part of the occasion, but really I was just devastated that my dad didn’t show up and ashamed that other kids’ dads wanted to say this blessing and mine didn’t.It wasn’t just this day.My version of thingsalwayshad to be a different or lesser version of the way things were supposed to be, because I didn’t have father who would lift a finger to participate in my life.Instead he let the woman he made me with work double time, giving me a childhood of being raised by an understandably over-exerted mother who never asked for things to be like this, either. Then he lied (both Bat Mitzvah days) about why he didn’t come. On the second day, she caught him.
The instant I came off the bimah I ran to a phone and called my father, because since a Bat Mitzvah is the most important day of a little Jewish girl’s life and no sane parent would ever miss it, I was certain he had been in an accident of some kind. What else? What else could keep a parent from their child’s Bat Mitzvah? Honestly it’s the same thing as just…skipping your kid’s wedding just for grins. He picked up the phone and told me there had a been a fire at the juvenile detention facility where he worked and he had to be there. My mother called the facility to confirm. No fire.
The moment I found out he was lying was the moment I realized he was a liar. Suddenly a veil that had been held together by a child’s love and trust was incinerated and I saw the space I actually occupied in my father’s life. I saw how he chose not to be a father to his daughter. Every band concert he skipped because of flat tires (he seemed to get a lot of them), every dance recital or parent’s night at school where he had to work late or was sick, every single reason he’d ever given me suddenly reeked of bullshit, and while I was angry at him, I was more disappointed in me. I should have known better than to believe all of it. I always used to wonder why my mother hated my father so much. I didn’t wonder anymore after that.
If none of this sounds that bad to you, you should know that he was present at every single one of my little brother’s tee ball games and practices. Every sport my brother ever played, every event that required the presence of a parent, my brother had two parents there. My father rarely skipped anything that pertained to my brother. Not even his Bar Mitzvah, which occurred three years after mine. By that time he’d stopped renting apartments with enough space for me. He’d get one-bedrooms and my brother would sleep on the couch. I can count on one hand the number of weekends I went to his place after my Bat Mitzvah anyway. At the time, by law in Texas at 13 you were old enough to choose. Thank goodness.
When I was about 28, I got an envelope in the mail containing another envelope from Bank of America addressed to me that had been sent to him by mistake. A note to me inside was written on a one inch by one inch scrap of paper. “I think this is for you. I hope you’re well. Dad” He couldn’t be bothered by a greater amount of blank space. That’s the only communication of any kind between the two of us since my 21st birthday. I’m 40 now.
My father maintained a relationship with my brother until a few years ago. Not that he was an amazing father to my brother, but they had each other’s contact information at the very least. Sometime in early July, my father got sick with Covid, and for the first time in years, he called my brother. He did not make any effort to contact me. He died shortly thereafter, and authorities notified my brother once he’d been found. He told my mom, my mom told me, and now I’m telling you. Because I always thought I’d feel nothing when he died, and I don’t.
I spent my adulthood assuming I’d get a call one day, most likely when the lung cancer diagnosis or similar came through. I figured before he left he’d at least like to know how I was, or where I was, the actual human daughter he made. But he never cared, to my knowledge he was never even curious—at least not enough to make a phone call or even ask my brother for information. (My brother wouldn’t really have had this information anyway, we do not have a relationship. Though we both have one with my mother. Sick of my nuclear family shit yet? I am.)
Here’s what my father could have known about me: I’m fantastic. I’ve built a career for myself doing what I love, doing what I’m good at. I graduated college and law school. I live in a beautiful home, I rent it but that’s my strong preference. I’ve traveled a bit, I’ve published a book, I publish a podcast every Monday morning and I have for 3.5 years. I’m a good person, I’m a good daughter. I’m the reason he didn’t have to die sick and alone but he chose to anyway. He could have a had a very capable daughter on a flight to Arizona to take care of him, someone to scream at him to stop smoking or get vaccinated. Someone to know when the Covid got bad enough that it was time to go to the hospital. He could have chosen to have a wonderful daughter in his life, but he decided long ago that he didn’t want me. Instead, he did what so many 80s parents are good at, he blamed me for our lack of relationship. Nothing at any point was ever his fault, really. Every parental shortcoming was somehow piled back on a kid not even four feet tall. Every reasonable request or expectation of someone who decided to make a person was deemed asking too much. All while he delivered those things to one child while the other watched.
I think he knew he was done, that’s why he called my brother. One last opportunity to pretend he only had one child, one last chance to live as a coward in hiding. In hiding from me. My father and brother are similar in many, many ways, which is probably why he always felt more comfortable maintaining that relationship. He never had to explain himself to my brother. I assume he knew he would have quite a bit to explain to me. I was never, not even in death, worth the effort. It took a very long time to understand that this says nothing about me, and everything about him.
It’s done now. There are no more years to tally since the last time I spoke to my biological father. It stops at 19, a couple weeks after my 40th birthday and a few weeks after his 70th. I don’t have an exhaustingly fucked up family scenario in the back of my mind anymore every time I see a father walk his daughter down an aisle. The story is different now. He’s not alive anymore, and that’s the reason we’re not speaking. It changes things for me. At least this reason makes sense.
How do things get so far gone? How do you go from the joy of a positive pregnancy test to disappearing from one child’s life, by choice? It baffles me more now than it did as a kid, seeing so many friends so joyful and engrossed in their children, you can’t fathom them ever feeling differently. It’s not unlike the memories I have of my father adoring me. But only for a short amount of time, and then everything changed so drastically it’s hard to remember the joy of that young family at all. I never wondered why my parents got a divorce. I’ve always wondered why they got married. I’ve always wondered how two people so different and incompatible ended up together, why they even bothered to make me. Why am I even here? Then I figured out that I am the reason. I was meant to exist, and the way that happened was something improbable and ill-fated, but necessary all the same. When I told my best friend that my father died I was having a hard time finding something positive to say about his life, something good he did in the world, and then she reminded me, “He made you.”