Another Father’s Day Without My Dad

I was returning from a business trip and called my mom, as usual, during my commute home.  What I expected to be an uneventful call, would instead begin the chain of events that ultimately became the most devastating difficulty of my life. She told me that my dad said he decided he was going to divorce her.

My parents divorcing was unfathomable to me. My parents led the marriage ministry at my church, and had done so for nearly 20 years. Growing up, they were notoriously flirtatious. My dad’s playful nature and affection for my mom was regularly on display. They’d stroll through the mall food court (where my sister and I worked as teenagers) with his hand in the back pocket of my mom’s jeans prompting us to roll our eyes and murmur “ewww gross” as they passed. Even at home, he’d glide over to my mom as she stood over the kitchen sink washing dishes after a nightly family dinner, wrap his arms around her and initiate a dance, sometimes silly and funny, sometimes slow and romantic.

My dad showed his love for my sister and I, too. He was an involved father: coaching our sports teams, teaching us about his outdoors hobbies, using lunch breaks to attend school talent shows, concerts and assemblies.  When my sister and I moved away after college, our visits home began with his usual silliness like him picking me up at the airport in a suit and chauffer’s cap holding a sign with only my last name scrawled on it as though he was working for a private car service or meeting me at his front door of the house doing a short choreographed dance, more than a decade before TikTok, chanting that he was so happy because I was back home. The visits always ended with long hugs, smiles, and an invitation to move back home anytime because he missed us so much.

My dad and I spoke weekly. He spoke with my sister daily who bonded with her on their shared love of our hometown sports teams. Neither of us would have ever, ever, ever guessed that he would ghost us.

In the middle of the morning, my dad went to the elementary school where my mom worked to tell her that he had just moved out of the home they shared for 29 years. A day later he sent my sister and I a text to tell us he left and ask us not to contact him because he would contact us in a few weeks.  A year and a half later, he called announcing he was ready to “put this in the past”. He called for two days straight. Despite me reaching out and his impeccable reputation for expeditiously returning calls, we haven’t spoken since. It will be 3 years in September.

Although I am devastated that my dad choses to stay out of my life, my pain was more severe for my mom and the emotional, social, physical, psychological and financial hardships she endured because of my dad’s abandonment. I was relieved to learn that her story is not as unique as it seemed at the time, that there are other runaway husbands who disappear without warning or valid rationale.

Now as I approach another Father’s Day without my dad, I wonder if there are others like my sister and I, adult children of runaway husbands trying to figure out why other divorced dads maintain a relationship with their kids, but our dad chooses to stay absent from us and his grandchildren. Why we find ourselves in a unique place among adult children on Father’s Day. We are not quite like those who have grown numb to the annual celebration because of decades of disappointment stemming from childhood. Nor can we claim the intense grief and sorrow that I can only image comes from a beloved father who has passed away. We are navigating the mix of disappointment and grief by trying to understand why he abandoned us.  We assume the reason is shame. He was a man who fragrantly dismissed parents for walking out on their families. Now he is that parent and Father’s Day will never, never, never be the same again.