Forgiveness and Acceptance

I mention my Dad here and there, but not in one particular blog because it is just too complicated. Since this past Friday, 2/22, marked the 2nd anniversary of his passing, I felt it was a good time for me to reflect and tell you a bit more about him. This is a story of how God intervened in my feelings of self-righteousness and gave me the opportunity of forgiveness before it was too late.

Some History on Dad

My father was born Richard Herman Connors, but we knew him as Joseph Richard Goodwin. He didn’t find out the real story behind his birth until he signed up for the Coast Guard. At that time, he discovered that his mother left him upon delivery and the two he believed were his parents, were actually his Aunt and Uncle. The man he knew as Uncle Connie, was his biological father – an alcoholic who died as a result of his disease. These things were hard for my father to digest.

Years later, when my parents separated, my father’s presence in our lives became rather small. I believe there were many reasons for that, but mostly what I now believe it to be, was his personal demons. He was always running and hiding from somebody or something, and he liked his alcohol too.

Like any child who has a negligent parent, I was always hopeful it would be better.

I had found my voice fairly young at telling him how I felt and is something I talk about in my racism story. I guess I had hoped I would shame him into being a better father? In hindsight, all I probably accomplished was making him feel worse about himself, but I didn’t understand that at the time. Something I need to forgive myself for doing.

The times I can tell you my father was there for me, was at all my weddings. He was proud to be there with me, and I do know he loved me. He also always came to visit me in the hospital when my kids were born. My father was there for those big moments! Was it because my mother made him? I don’t know, but he was not there for most of the other moments. Not when you actually needed him or had a problem. I think he wanted to be that guy and honestly believe he just couldn’t get out of his own way.

Was he blocked by a fear that he was never able to get past? Was it a fear of rejection from his mother leaving him? It’s all very unfortunate, and I wish I knew the answers. I also know he got himself mixed up with the wrong kind of people. There is so much we don’t know, and I can only write about what I do.

The Later Years

Flash forward many years, and my Dad would move to Maryland. After that, we would hardly ever hear from him. A little more time passes and my Joe gets cancer. He was sick for over two years and in that time, my Dad only saw my boy once for a couple of hours. During those same two years, my brother’s wife, Leslie, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and my daughter, Christine, got engaged. Leslie’s prognosis was not promising from the beginning and was told she would only have 1.5 – 2 years to live. Joe finished his treatment in September 2011, my niece, Kim got married, Leslie was declining quickly, and Christine was getting married on Thanksgiving weekend. A lot was going on in our family!

The anger was deep after he didn’t show for my niece’s wedding. I remember telling him that if he didn’t show up for Christine’s wedding or come up to say goodbye to Leslie or at least be there for his son; I would never talk to him again. He said he was coming but never showed up. There was even a time or two when my brothers were picking him up from a train that he never arrived on. He did not attend Christine’s wedding nor Leslie’s funeral a week later.

I was done and told him I never wanted to hear from him again.

The Beginning of Forgiveness

Months later I received a phone call about a babysitting job. A woman who had just started working at the same school as my daughter was looking for somebody to watch her 10-month-old, Leo, and 5-year old daughter, Sophie. We met, chatted and I started watching the kids. It was the perfect fit.

One day about a week after I started babysitting, I had a conversation with my mother while Leo napped. We were talking about the location of where I was babysitting. My parents met because they were living across the street from each other and here I was in the same town, and on the very road they lived. I told her the house number, but she said it wasn’t familiar. She did remember the address of the apartment building she lived in, and when I looked out the window of the house, I saw it was the same. Low and behold, we figured out that I was babysitting in the same home in which my father grew up.

Fifty years after my father left his childhood home, I was looking out the same window he undoubtedly looked out of hundreds of times himself. Coincidence? No way! I was mind boggled because I knew this was happening for a reason. But what could that be? I realized this had something to do with God.

Maybe a week or two later, my brother, Chris, called. He was telling me that he spoke to Josephine, my father’s wife and he had something to say to me; our father had cancer and displaying the early stages of Alzheimer’s. This was also when I learned my father had married again.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. The reason I was in this house had to do with the news I had just received. I also knew that I would have to pick up the phone and start the journey of mending our relationship before it was too late. That was the start of the long road to acceptance for the human being he was and forgiveness for the relationship I had hoped for but never gotten.

I called right away, as we all did and made plans for him to visit. When you hear the news that we had, suddenly everything else becomes less important.

Taking Him Back in Time

I would soon discover that ending up in this house, wasn’t just for me, it was also for him. My father struggled with his past. He had a hard time after learning the untruths from the first part of his life. I would be able to give him the gift of coming back to his first home. Maybe it would give him the opportunity to let go of whatever he was holding onto all these years. Perhaps he could find some sort of forgiveness that he was looking for within himself. I don’t know … but wouldn’t we all want to go back to the homes we lived in as a child? I would love to just look around and try to recover some happy memories.

We made a plan for my dad to come to his childhood home. It was a thrilling moment for me when my father got to walk around the house and talk about some memories. He showed us which room was his and described how the house had changed from the way he remembered. He quietly looked out the window a few times. It’s hard to know what was going on in his head, but you could see he was reflecting. My father did not have any family. The “Dad” who raised him passed away in the late 1950s, and his “Mom” died when I was a very young child. What being in this house must have meant to him … a connection to his past and the only family he had growing up.

That week he came to visit was one of the more quality times my brothers, and I ever had with our father.

It was so important to us, and we could see first-hand how dementia was starting to rear its ugly head. He thanked me so many times that week for giving him the opportunity to go back in time, and be in his childhood home … how much it meant to him. It must have had some sort of a profound effect on him, but as a man of few words, I will never know what that was. I was just grateful to have been able to give him this gift.

He never did visit again. We tried, but it just didn’t happen. My brothers and I did take a few road trips to see him for long lunches. We shared a lot of laughs bonding during those drives. We also spent enough time with him so he could feel important and remember he is a father. The last time we saw him was a few weeks before he passed away. My anger had vanished, and seeing him so fragile, knowing he was near the end, the forgiveness was complete.

Cancer took him before the Alzheimer’s did and that was a blessing. God was merciful.

Final Thoughts on Forgiveness and Acceptance

God put me in that house for a reason. It wasn’t just for me, but to give him some sort of healing before he died. I hope it gave him the opportunity to forgive himself and maybe see he had a good life there – to provide him with a chance to go back and work through some of his own torment. Also to kick me in the butt and to grant him the forgiveness we both needed. To accept him for the person he was. I needed to let go of all my anger because otherwise, I would have to live with it.

Do you think this was a coincidence? I promise you, it wasn’t. I say this to everyone – if this story makes you think about anyone in your life that you need to forgive or you want to reach out to, just do it … what are you waiting for? Let this Sunday be the first step towards the forgiveness you seek or need for yourself.

I am still in that house babysitting six years later. That gift from God just keeps giving by having this family and those kids in my life and watching them grow. Always there for me as a reminder of my father when I can look across the street at the building my mother lived in and know that was how they met. This is a gift that keeps giving and keeping my life full of crazy – apparently the way I like it.

For another post on forgiveness, you can read a guest blog here.

Much love always on this day and every day,

Sandy

#enlighten #empower #inspire #educate #BeKind and try to #forgive