Our Father

Angela stood looking out the open window as a cool breeze rushed in, flowed up into her hair and sent a shiver down her spine. The curtains danced around her in the wind, pressing against her and brushing across her skin. It was a sunny spring day. Out the window, she was looking at a garden of sprouting flowers, freshly cut green grass, and leaves budding on the trees, but she saw none of it. To her, everything was dark and somber.
Wrapped around the knuckles of her right hand was her rosary, made of a string of imitation pearls. Her thumb stroked the cross depicting the body of Jesus. She hadn’t believed since she was fifteen, but the rosary still brought her comfort. It was given to her by her father when she was eleven on the day she was baptized as a Roman Catholic – her father’s religion, and his father’s before him. He was so proud of her that day, although he himself did not actually practice the religion. Angela had never seen him as proud of her as he was when she emerged from the tub of holy water, a newly saved girl. What made him even prouder was that he had sparked her interest in religion when he gifted her with her grandmother’s Holy Bible when the old lady died.
When she was a child, it was hard for her to understand the things her father did. When he left her mother, she was sure that he still loved the children he’d had with her, although as she grew older she began to doubt whether that was actually true. After he left, it was months before she saw him again. Most of the time it was months between phone calls from him as well. In fact, the day of her baptism was the first time she had seen him in almost a year. This pattern continued through much of her childhood until she finally stopped wanting to see him – around the same time she stopped believing.
When she reached adulthood, Angela tried to be more forgiving, and she didn’t need religion to tell her that was the right thing to do. Over the course of several years, she tried to get to know her father, only to be let down and hurt. It was exhausting to try to have a relationship with a father who made himself impossible to know and impossible to love. In her mid-twenties, she decided that she didn’t want to speak to him ever again, no matter how deeply it hurt her.
Their final argument echoed deep in her mind.
“So you’re having a graduation party for my little brother, and the whole family was invited but me? What, because your wife doesn’t like me?”
“You live three hours away,” he reasoned, “You wouldn’t be able to make it.”
“You don’t know that. You still could have invited me, even if you thought I wouldn’t be able to make it. It’s the principal. God, I am so tired of always having to take the back burner to that bitch.”
“Hey!” She recalled how quickly his face turned crimson red, and his eyes glazed over with blind anger. “Don’t you call her that!”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you know another word for a woman who comes between a man and his daughter?”
He stood from the chair in which he’d been sitting, putting his weight on the cane he’d been using since age had caused degeneration in his spine – the result of an old injury. “I’ve told you for the last time –”
“No, I’ve told you,” she interrupted. “I am so tired of you defending her when she’s obviously wrong. I am so tired of you choosing her over your own children. And you know what? I’m also tired of having this same conversation with you. You’re never gonna change, and you’ve let me down for the last time. I’ve had it. I never want to see you again!”
Seven years had passed since Angela had reached out to her father. He hadn’t been at her wedding. He hadn’t been invited. He had never met the man who was now her husband. He had never met her daughter. She didn’t tell him when she found out that she was pregnant, although she was sure that he’d heard from the family. No matter how deeply it pained her to cut him out of her life, she knew that she’d only be setting herself up for the inevitable disappointment.
So, even though she no longer prayed on the rosary, she carried it with her as a testament to her memories of a time when, in her childish naiveté, she had still thought of her father as her hero. Even without the belief in Christ, the rosary still gave her the comfort it had given her when she’d recited the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary on it when she believed those prayers would protect her. Mostly though, it gave her comfort in the moments when she missed her father deeply.
As she looked out the window now, she thought about lighting a cigarette. Although not a smoker, she always knew if she saw her father again, she’d need something to calm her nerves. She had often wondered what she would say to him. Of course, confronting him about the past had crossed her mind, but she knew where that would lead. It was a tired scene of her life that had run its course. One thing she always knew was that she would not tell him how much she had missed him. She wouldn’t let him have that victory.
Her younger brother, Sam came to stand next to her by the window and asked, “Where’s Eric?”
“He wanted to come,” she answered, “but I didn’t want this to be the first time he met Dad’s family.”
“Didn’t you think you’d need the emotional support?”
“No,” she shook her head somberly. “I wanted to do this alone.”
Sam didn’t argue. Instead, he put his arm around her and asked, “Are you ready to come in?”
She wasn’t ready, but it was time. She turned to Sam and said, “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
With the anxiety that always comes with painful situations, she left the comfort of her window and crossed into the next room where her father waited. Sam kissed her forehead and watched as she entered the room without him. Her father’s wife scowled at her, but she ignored it. In fact, she ignored all of the eyes that had settled on her – the eyes of the seemingly nameless faces of people who had been sure she wouldn’t show.
She knelt in front of her father, still with a firm grasp on the rosary. Although he had never been a devout Christian, she still felt it necessary to cross herself and recite the Lord’s Prayer out loud.
“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
A silent tear streaked down her face as she prayed. She knew this moment would be painful, but the reality of it was much worse than what she had imagined.
“…thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”
She heard the uncomfortable shuffling of others in the room and her father’s wife’s impatient sighing behind her. She ignored it.
“…give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…”
What a silly sentiment forgiveness was, especially when talking about her father. How many times had she forgiven him?
“…and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”
After finishing her prayer, she stood and looked directly into her father’s face. She was struck by how much he had aged since she saw him last. It hurt her to know that he had grown old and she hadn’t been there to realize it. The idea that he hadn’t been there to see her grow from a child into a woman did not matter to her much in this moment.
Quietly, so no one else could hear, she said, “I don’t know what to say to you. I’ve waited for an opportunity to talk to you for so long, but now that I have it, I’m lost for words.”
Despite all of the things her father had ever done to her – the abandonment, the lies, and the using – she felt a deep guilt for the way she had treated him, and her stubbornness in shunning him. She hated him for making her feel that way.
As more tears rushed down her face she said the only words that came to her mind – the one thing she had promised herself she would never say to him, “Daddy, I’ve missed you so much.”
Leaning forward, she gently kissed his forehead, and placed the rosary on his chest. Still ignoring the room full of eyes, she wiped the tears from her face as she walked away from his casket.