How Do You Mourn the Death of a Parent Who Was Never There?

My dad died last week.

We weren’t very close; we hadn’t been in a while, and I don’t think I had even seen him in person in more than three years. The last time we were in the same room together was in 2019 in his nursing home bedroom when we went to visit him. He couldn’t walk or move much of his body after the major stroke that left him bed-ridden and unable to function like he used to. My dad was a tremendously good athlete and could play any sport he was interested in, so to see him in this state was strange and difficult. All of that potential, gone, reduced to a metal bed and a thin hospital gown.

Gary, my father, had a big heart. He had a passion for life and, as I was told over and over again at his funeral by everyone who greeted me, he loved his kids. A lot. They all told me how he always talked about us and how important we were to him. The thing is, he wasn’t there for so much of my childhood and almost none of my adult life, so it was hard to feel the love everyone spoke about.

And that is why I find myself here, writing this and questioning why I am so damn heartbroken over his death.

I truly didn’t know him that well, so why am I so sad? Why am I taking this so hard? When we received the call about the horrible choice that no one should ever have to make for someone else had, in fact, to be made the next day (my older sister was left with the harrowing task to choose to remove him from the ventilator or to keep him on for a few days until his passing), it was almost a relief.

We had all, myself and my siblings, been waiting for a call like this for years. My dad was never in good health due to the drinking and the drugs, so it was a situation where we knew he could die at any time because how could anyone live a long life with the choices he was making to his body?

And the truth is, he wasn’t living. Not really. Not in any kind of way that would be considered a good life. We were told he shared those same thoughts with our aunt a few months back. He was in the nursing home for close to four years, confined to a wheelchair and not really able to do anything on his own. He would often say random, off the wall things daily, which was all caused by the stroke. So I have to agree with him: that isn’t really living, is it?

A question we’ve received over and over again throughout the years is what our relationship with our dads is like. People have picked up on the fact we don’t ever show them online and that we only feature our moms. That’s because our dads are not in our lives, and we both believe it’s for the best.

When my parents divorced in 1996, I was five, so a single-parent home is all I’ve ever known. We would visit him in the summers, and he would come into town every now and then, but we lived with my mom, and we were all happiest that way. After the divorce, my dad moved back to South Georgia where the rest of his side of the family lives, which, in turn, left me and my brother and my younger sister back in Tennessee.

He left us to fend for ourselves. He left my mom to raise three kids on her own while working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. He left us to pick up the pieces of a life they built together, a life they envisioned for themselves, for us kids, and for our family.

If you’ve been here a while, you know we live in the same house I grew up in, the same house my mom and dad bought in the mid 80’s, renovated themselves and raised three kids in. If that sounds just like our story, just know the similarities are not lost on me, either. We have dreams and a life planned out for our family, too, and after thinking about it for the last few days, asking myself why I’m taking his death so much harder than I thought I ever would, I think I have come to this conclusion:

For what could have and should have been. He should have seen us get older and experience our milestones in person. He should have been at every one of my football games and helped my mom shuffle us between school and activities. He should have held me when I was sad and smiled when I was happy and cheered for me when I succeeded. Instead, he wasn’t there for any of it.

There was so much potential for a happy life spent together. Now that I’m a father myself, I can’t imagine ever doing anything to jeopardize my family and what we have. And the thing is, my dad had it all: A loving wife, children who adored him, a successful business. But he chose a different life.

The frustrating part about all of this is, and despite all that I’ve said, we actually had a good relationship, considering. He accepted me whole-heartedly and never had a problem with the fact that I am gay. He loved PJ and had so much fun talking construction with him whenever we got together.

My dad was a doer, always building things and helping people out with whatever they needed. PJ is the same way, so they always bonded over their shared love of working on houses and getting things accomplished.

Because we got along so well, and for the most part, always enjoyed each other’s company, I just see the life we had as wasted potential. If he would have stayed in our lives, we could have been great together. I know it. Instead, my siblings and I spent our adolescence feeling let down whenever he wouldn’t show up, and wondering if we had done something wrong to make him leave.

When you’re young, your parents are your world and can do no wrong. When you get older, you know better. Parents are not as superhuman as you once thought, and they can make mistakes, and they often do. Kids are resilient, and they will keep coming back to you even when you don’t deserve it. So once we were older, we started to know better and we started to take measures to protect ourselves from the hurt he had caused us so frequently when we were little.

This meant less trips down to see him over the years (from now on, if he wanted to see me or my siblings, he would have to find a way to come to us), less and less phone calls and texts, and less reaching out in general. When you spend your whole life waiting for someone and they never quite show up, you eventually get tired and you find ways to move on for the good of yourself and those around you. For us, it meant realizing that, as much as we wanted and needed him in our lives, he would never be a dad to us, and we had to let that idea of him go. We loved him as a person, but not as a father anymore.

I know my dad had a rough childhood, and after my parents’ divorce, his life was even harder, but I also know he had choices to make, and he made them again and again. He had so many chances given to him by everyone in his life, and he just kept making the wrong decisions. I wasn’t in his shoes, so I don’t know what he was going through, but I do know how it felt being on the receiving end of those choices, and it was excruciating at best and crushing at worst.

I have come to the conclusion that I feel the most sad about the fact that things will never get better between us now. I think a small, tiny part of me that I had buried deep inside still felt that, even though we didn’t talk and he would be in a nursing home for the rest of his life, he would one day tell me he was sorry, that he messed up and had a disease that he couldn’t fight alone and that he made mistakes but wanted to make it right now. I didn’t realize it before, but I needed some sort of closure from him, a closure that I now know I will never get. I would have loved him forever, but death is so finite and forever for him means something different for me now.

How do you mourn for a parent who has passed away when they were never there to begin with? It’s a question I’ve been asking so much lately because I need to know why I feel the way I do. How can I cry over someone, still, after 32 years of doing so, when they’re not even in my life anymore?

He was never there, but I wanted so badly for him to be, until one day I didn’t anymore. And suddenly it became normal to not talk about him, to not think about him, to not see him. He was never there, but he should have been there for us all, which I feel angry and so incredibly sad about at the same time. He was never there, but I know now it wasn’t because of me or my brother or my sisters, but because he didn’t get help for something he battled his entire life. He was never there, but I so wish he would have been to meet our children, because they’re so great and he would have loved them. He was never there, but he should have been. For all of it.

He was never there, and now, he never will be.