The Father-Daughter Dance

My friend found out yesterday that her father is dying in Switzerland, and she and another friend happened to be at my house yesterday morning when she got the call. It felt like divine timing that she “happened” to be at my house, instead of alone in her apartment, when she received this call, and then had to argue with her phone company to get international calling added to her account so that she could call the ER where her dad was admitted.

We were able to sit there with her, just to sit in my kitchen while she paced my living room, on the phone. Able to make her tea and just set it there, whether she wanted to drink it or could or not. Able to bear witness to her tears, and her fear and her love and her fraughtness about timing and money and taxes and passports and citizenship.

We were able to help her talk through her very next steps, just the ones she needed to do that day in order to prepare to get on a flight tonight.

It was a gift to be able to be present with that.

These past two days, I’ve pulled the “Emperor” card. Shuffled them thoroughly, cut the deck, and again, this morning, I pulled the Emperor card.

I squick at this card. I don’t like it. In my book, it lists the traits of this card: Fathering, Structure, Authority, Regulation.

Um, you all know my dad was in the military, yes?

My friend yesterday, between phone calls, told us how much she loved and admired her father; what a kind man he was, how great a man he was. It was obvious that she had great esteem for him.

I, do not have the same feelings toward my own. And strangely, I got an email from him just a few days ago.

We haven’t spoken in months. Not since his brother died unexpectedly over Christmas.

But, I had been thinking about him, and that it was probably time for me to send an, “I’m not dead” email, just a check-in, just to touch base. And then, there was his email.

So, I replied. Reported the generic updates I would tell a casual acquaintance about my life. And it’ll probably be another several months until we speak again.

I’m still livid, folks. I’m still angered and betrayed and astonished at how he behaved when I had cancer, when I was going through chemo. How he demanded phone calls on his time table, instead of mine, when I was the one in a hospital bed with chemo dripping into a port in my chest. How he simply told me, when I asked for this to change, that, “This is how it works.” How, even though he was newly retired and was working in the yard of his fiancé, he somehow didn’t have any other time in the day to call his daughter in the hospital.

And mostly, it’s just sad. It just still saddens me that this man has no idea how to show up for people. That if it isn’t something that is structured, regulated, and orderly, he doesn’t know how to address it, and therefore, he simply tries to quash it. And, unfortunately, people, I’ve grown up too much to be quashed by him anymore.

I’ve done a ton of work around him, asking for compassion and forgiveness. In fact, just these few weeks, I’ve been using a new affirmation: I forgive my dad fully and easily.

Strange to realize now, after the new email, the Emperor card, my friend’s ailing father, that this might be part of that process. This doesn’t seem like coincidental timing to me.

I know that I have more work to do. I know that I feel very unwilling to forgive him, even at the same time that I have compassion and understanding for someone who never, ever had kindness modeled for him. Someone who didn’t have his own father, and only a step-father who demanded perfection and doled out derision. I know “how” to have compassion for him. And sometimes, many times, I have it.

But, forgiveness is another thing.

And I know that my unwillingness to forgive, to continue to drink the poison I intend for him, is only holding me back, and is only creating blackness in the light I want to move toward. I know that my unwillingness to forgive yokes me to him as surely as shackles, or, perhaps, as surely as love. 

I also know that it is only in the past few weeks that I’ve begun seeing this new therapist, and last week, just the mention of my father, almost in passing, came up. She remarked later that it was clear there was some work to be done there. Which, obviously, I know, and hope for us to do together.

The last thing, and the only thing that’s keeping me from burning that Emperor card is the end of the description in my book. It says this card can also stand in for the archetypal father “in his role as guide, protector, and provider.”

Surely, mine was not able to be this in a way that was supportive. But these are the exact qualities that I’ve been seeking and hoping the “Universe” embodies. That I’ve been praying for, and trying to trust the Universe to have. That it supports me with guidance, protection, and provisions.

Individual, versus Archetype. Reality versus Fantasy. Compassion versus forgiveness.

I really hate that card.