I Heard My Father had Died from Google...

One more thing to get off my chest before I dive into the Holiday Season and put up my tree, deck the halls and bake cookies in my pink sparkly apron…This year I found out my father died by doing a Google search…

My mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer when I was 13. Due to intense radiation and chemotherapy, severe brain damage was caused and while she lived for almost 25 years longer, she required 24-hour care, was immobile and routinely had no idea who I was. So yes – she was alive for many years longer than doctors had predicted, but she was not “living”. During this time, my family fell apart. My father bought books about suicide and left them in plain sight for his children to see. Medical bills took everything from us – our home, car and most all possessions. The day I left for college I took everything I could with me as there would be no place to come home to and there was no place to keep things. Sometimes during crisis, families come together and build a strong bond. Mine fell apart. My father gave up – he went on to live his life, dating anyone from my mother’s nurse to any lady across the country he met on America Online. If anything – he made a painful situation even worse as he made it beyond clear that my sister and I were on our own. While most kids were being driven to college by their parents and having heartfelt goodbyes, my father offered me nothing – not even a ride to school. I wanted to have a relationship with him, I tried to remember the good – but it was so hard. Even before my mother got sick we were not a happy family. My father was angry, always screaming – explosive. My mother was silent and passive. She had survived the worst kinds of abuse as a child and I think to her – she accepted our family for what it was as it was at least better than what she had growing up. My mother, her life and my childhood is a whole other Lifetime movie – so I will save that for the book (that Oprah will of course love), you will see me featured on Supersoul Sunday and then of course, the TV movie will come out where Drew Barrymore will play me as I am now – and we will need to find a cute, chubby redhead to play me as a child. So to recap – mother terminally ill and bedridden, father angry, hostile and suicidal and teenage daughters just pushed out into the world on their own…In order to keep myself sane and safe, I had to essentially disconnect from my father. Every time we interacted it was toxic and it would take me weeks to emotionally recover. No matter how crappy things were when I was a kid, I kept holding out for hope that he would become a real parent – the kind I saw around me who would talk to their kids (not scream), offer them guidance, a shoulder to cry on or just BE there for them. That was never the case – and after years of hoping, I realized he was who he was and would never change. A narcisist can’t learn to think of others, they can't learn compassion and they absolutely cannot learn how to be a parent. So – I let go of the dream and with that I let my father go (Just Like Elsa sang - Let it go, Let it go!) Every year or so I would get a phone call from him – usually looking for money. Then there were the times he forged my name and used my information to buy or lease cars and then defaulted on the payments – which required me to hire a lawyer in whichever state he was living in to represent me and prove I was not liable. Over 10 years went by without a word from him. Occasionally I would google his name just to see if anything popped up. Usually I would get results along the lines of a loan he was overdue on or he had a new address somewhere on the East coast. About 5 years ago his wife (he remarried when I was 19) created a Facebook page and I would scan it for photos of him. I didn’t do this because I missed my father – but more because I was curious about what people I was/am related to looked like at an older age. While I look like my sister – well, she looks a bit better than me - her and her super natural color, no grey roots and bouncy waves…no hair dye for her! (I love my sister very much FYI J), but we are both around the same age and I was curious about what we may look like when we are older. Not that I would look like a man – but, pure curiosity – I wanted to know what he looked like. His wife only posted photos of her and occasionally her daughters - a whole other rabbit hole – found out he helped raise her children – the man barely wanted the kids that were biologically his and yet he chose to help raise other kids while he left his to fend for themselves! Just another reason why my book will be a huge national bestseller and an epic made for TV Lifetime movie….

Fast forward to a few months ago. A coworker and I were talking about dysfunctional families – she and I are quite close as we have worked together for some time and we have shared and bonded over “bad” family stories. As we were chatting, I told her I occasionally google my father, just to see if he is alive. And so, I typed his name in, and there was his obituary in the search results. I quietly clicked on it and read that he had died of a prolonged lung illness (he smoked 2-3 packs of cigarettes per day for decades). The obituary went on to talk about how he was survived by his wife, his 2 stepdaughters and a grandchild. My sister and I were not mentioned at all. We did not exist to him. At first I was angry – then I calmed down. I made my choice years ago, and he had also made his. Maybe it was too painful for him to remember his 2 children. That would lead to many other feelings about my mother and her illness and the kind of husband he was, which was not a good one. I have found peace with his death and his obituary based on the fact that we all do what we need to survive. I did what I had to do, and I am blessed and grateful that I not only survived, but I have thrived and found happiness and love. I don’t know if he ever did. After he died his wife posted some photos of him on Facebook. I was shocked at what he looked like. It was kind of like that scene in Riding in Cars with Boys when Drew Barrymore brings her grown son to see his father for the first time in years to get him to sign permission to use his likeness in her book. They pull up to a trailer and the door opens and he finds a small man living in poverty and only a few teeth. To see his father like that, the son is of course in shock. I am not incredibly rich and I don’t live in a mansion – but looking at the photos of my father, basically toothless, cigarette dangling in hand – I was shocked and sad. I had no visual of my father in over 20 years and while I had no expectations – I guess I had hoped he would be different. It’s so hard to explain – he wasn’t a good father, he wasn’t there for me, he was selfish and sometimes very cruel – but even with him gone I was hoping for a picture of the man I wanted him to be, the father I wished him to be. I wanted this for me – selfishly. I looked at that photo for so long – it crushed my heart. While I gave up on my father long ago, somewhere inside me I am still that little girl who just longed for a parent. Growing up I had one parent in the hospital who was sick and helpless and another that was physically healthy, but psychologically broken. I have worked hard to build the life I have and in order to be sane, healthy and stable – I have had to make some very hard decisions over the years and one of those was disconnecting from my father. I had hoped that he would have an epiphany at some point and magically a card would appear in the mail, or even a message on Facebook, where he apologized. That apology would provide us both with some peace and while we would never be a father-daughter – we would have the final words that would provide closure. But this is real life and that’s how the powers that be wrote that chapter…so I live with our final moment together – which was me finding his obituary on Google while at work and then seeing the final photo I would ever see of him. I hope he had some happiness in his life and his final days were peaceful. Like it or not- he was my father and no matter how bad things were it really was the icing on the cake to find out he died by doing a Google search…