A letter of apology and forgiveness.
Dad, Ive been doing a lot of thinking recently and been going to a men’s circle for the last few months which has really helped me understand myself and challenge my ways of thinking. I’ve been very focused on self-improvement and becoming a better man. Part of this journey has led to try to understand the things that have made me the man I am Today. I am far from perfect myself but I am trying to always improve. It has made me realize that there are many things that I never said to you whilst you were alive that I want to address now so I can stop carrying them around with me and get on with my life.
For reasons outside of my control you were not present in my life. Until my late teens the only Father figures I have had in my life have been highly abusive and inflicted massive amounts of physical and emotional damage on me. I have had a lack of good role models and have had to learn how to be a man often by doing the opposite of the example that I have been shown.
Due to the absence of a loving father figure, I felt lost, unloved, worthless, uninspired, abandoned, betrayed, alone, suicidal , confused, hurt, not good enough, like a loser, not worthy of love and insignificant. Some of these issues still haunt me today.
I’m not saying this to make you feel bad but to help you understand what I went through and how this made me feel and affected my life. When we rediscovered each other when I was about 17 I was filled with hope, excitement, fear and anxiety due to how having a father figure in my life would affect things. I had a lot of expectations and hopes and what I ended up receiving was you.
I can see now that you were just a person with your own hopes, dreams, regrets and faults. You were never going to be perfect or what I needed. I know you did try in your own way. I can see, however, that you had your own expectations of how me in your life would change yours as well. I can see that I may have been a disappointment in that as well.
Whereas I don’t think you lived up to what should have been as a father to me I don’t think you are a bad man. I know you had your own problems that you were dealing with. I do feel that you shouldn’t have put the burden of these on me (a very troubled child who was in need of support himself instead of being the support mechanism to his father who was a grown man) and things should have been the other way around. As I have got older, I have understood more the things that you have done and your reasons for doing it.
In the last few years, I withdrew from you. I didn’t like the responsibility and emotional pressure that you put on me as I needed to focus on myself and finding myself without becoming ironically a father figure myself to you. I know this isn’t how you wanted things to be as I know you wanted us to be close. As in all things, we assume that there will be all the time in the world to address things and make things better. But this is obviously not the case.
I want to apologize for not giving you the attention you wanted or taking things seriously enough when you were in the hospital with Covid. I don’t think either of us expected you to die. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you in your final moments.
We have both had to deal with a lot of loss and pain in our lives. Neither of this was our fault and we have both done the best that we could of to get by.
Even though I feel that I did what was best for me by taking time away from you and the pressure you gave me and a lot of times I should have explained more to you how I was feeling instead of being unresponsive I want to say I’m sorry. I should have communicated better with you. I’m sorry if my actions caused you more stress, worry and hurt.
I learnt more about you when you died from people telling me stories about you and also going through your house sorting out your possessions. It made me realize that we were more similar than I first thought we were. This helped me view you in a gentler way. There are parts or you in me. You are part of the man I am today for better or worse.
You were my biological Father and nothing can change that. We both may have chosen for things to be different but they weren’t. I want you to know that I never hated you. If anything, at times I felt sorry for you. My template for love has been very different (I haven’t been shown much compared to the average person) and it has been throughout my life something that I have struggled both giving and receiving. Much the same as you I’m a product of my upbringing. But from this point forward I choose to think of you with nothing but love. Love is not something that happens because you want something in return but it a gift that is given.
Nearing the anniversary of your death over the Christmas period I want to let you know that my gift to you is one of Love and forgiveness. I forgive you for not being there. I forgive you for the pain that you caused me. I know you can’t respond now, but you don’t need to. I hope that you are resting at peace with your much-loved brother and mum. I hope you can look down on me kindly. I will continue trying to be the best man that I can be, and I hope that you are proud of the man I am.
I release you and myself from any further hurt and pain and expectation. We both are who we are. Neither of us are bad men.
We are just human.
Rest in Peace Dad. I love you.
Your slow to deal with his feelings son, Huw
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