"No one fills the shoes of a father. But the footprint that the man who fathered them left behind does not have to stay empty."
I have a high school buddy whose father died soon after my friend was born. He never met his dad. Never threw a ball with him or had 'the talk' or got/lost his dad's approval. And yet, if you ask my middle-aged friend what's the most formative, important and powerful relationship in his life, he'll say - "The one with my dad." Fathers are always there even when they're not.
We talk a lot about mothers, blame a lot on mothers, but for those facing another Father's Day without Dad and the enormous emptiness of the father-loss, it's impossible to overstate the essentialness of fatherhood. The power of a father's love, approval, guidance, mentoring, absence, betrayal, abandonment ... is often the central theme that lifts or sinks our life's journeys.
Where did Daddy go?
Fathers leave - or never enter - their children's lives for a lot of reasons. Some by choice, some are pushed out, some fade away, and some, like my beloved brother, are ripped from their families against every fiber of their being. My brother died traumatically and tragically three days after his son's first birthday.
At my brother's memorial service, students from the Chicago high school where he taught and coached their spoken-word poetry team, shared poems they wrote to honor their beloved teacher, Mr. C. One young man, who just days before sat tearfully with us in the hospital ICU, wrote these words about my brother:
"He played the role my father never auditioned for."
How can it possibly be that my brother, who eagerly took on the role of mentor, guide, coach, father, to so many fatherless sons, is not here today to be a father to his own son? So here we are, the family of women, mothering this darling boy. We could not adore him more. And yet, we cannot father him. So how do we, the mothers and aunts of these sons, tend to the presence of this terrible, aching absence?
Part of how I'm making my way through the agonizing loss is to write, to write about the grief and loss, the process my family and I are going through and the journeys of so many other folks suffering similar experiences. In honor of the lives and loss of fathers here are several posts reflecting the strengths, strategies and struggles of those left behind.
Thoughts on Dads
1. A Father's Day Gift to My Nephew: Your Dad Healed Everyone He Met
How can I keep my brother's memory alive when it's too painful to remember?
One of the cruelest tricks grief plays on me is this: The unspeakable pain left by the loss of my extraordinary younger brother renders me unable to talk about him. He's the only one who could help me heal the pain left by his death but he is not here. I remain so raw with grief that it's hard to even say his name.
But I have to. I have to hear his lion's roar of a laugh in my head so I can bring him to life with stories and memories and crazy dances and his joyful, loud-loudness for his son, who celebrated his first birthday three days before his dad died. Now he is about to turn 4. This joyful, playful, dancey, loud-laughing little boy must get to know his father through those of us who knew and loved him. That's my job.
That's where the cruel trick of grief comes in. I want so very, very much to share the astonishing life and enormous heart of my brother to his son. But the remembering causes such sadness. How can I push through and keep his memory and tremendous life force alive?
2. Living With Our Great Ache: No Dad on Super Bowl Sunday
How do you live with grief and grieve while you live?
We had an all-girl Super Bowl party Sunday, except for my delicious nephew who, at 2 and a half, already knows why peoples' eyes well up when they see him.
"My daddy died," he says.
His daddy, my best friend and greatest hero, younger brother, and former proud member of the Evanston Township High School football team, was not here Sunday to thunder around the house with his lion's roar, his foundation-shaking laugh. He was not there, is not here, and we are left to find small ways to do the impossible: to fill a cosmic black hole of maleness, energy, wisdom, intensity, thunderous laughter, endless empathy, and a deep knowledge of - and respect for - the game of football.
3. How Do You Mother Fatherless Sons?
He Lost the Greatest Dad Ever
Because I am a daughter and am the mother of a daughter, I know well the power and impact of the father-daughter relationship. We may identify with, or run to - or from - our mothers, but it is the original dance with our dads, studies show, that we spend our lives replaying, re-enacting and shadow-boxing with.
Dads and sons share an equally fundamental and powerful dynamic, one that shapes a son's identity - one I'm thinking about a lot as we approach the three-year mark of my brother's death and the 4th birthday of my brother's son.
One of many awful ironies of the loss of my brother is that he eagerly sought out and served the role of mentor, guide and father figure for so many of the students in the incredibly disadvantaged high school where he taught. One of the newspaper articles about my brother marveled about how he brought his scholarly mind and impressive Ivy League education to Chicago's West Side. His fancy degrees are the least of what he brought to those kids. He brought his whole heart and soul, his thunderous laugh, his big bear hugs and his unquenchable belief in the possibilities we all hold within us.
4. Creating a 'Volunteer Father Club' of Surrogate Dads
How surrogate fathers can greatly enrich the lives of fatherless sons
Father's Day has turned into Father's Month around here. It's only fair since I did the same for Mother's Month. I was wondering how mothers of fatherless sons find surrogates, or if they do.
The first person I thought of for advice was author, teacher, speaker and Northwestern colleague Prof. Michele Weldon. Maybe most importantly for my purposes, Weldon is the mother of three sons whose father is not in their lives. Here's her essential message:
"No one fills the shoes of a father. But the footprint that the man who fathered them left behind does not have to stay empty."
