Dad: love him, hate him, love him

Like many, I have had a turbulent time with my dad.

As a child I adored the hard working, muscular, capable man who worked from a garage filled with the rasp of machinery and the smell of sawn timber. He knew how to build things, smoked constantly, made us laugh.

But adoration turned to bewilderment when one day he was suddenly not there.

Another woman, another town, another life.

I can remember lying awake one night wondering what I should be feeling. Angry? Upset? Betrayed? Passionate tears refused to rise up from the depths of my 9-year old soul. Instead I just felt… confused.

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As a teenager, when I should have been fighting with my parents and rebelling, I found myself in a church and hearing about a Father who loved me, and gave his Son to die for me. I found in the church fellowship fine examples of faithful men, who modelled an attractive and compelling manhood that embraced responsibility and nurturing love.

My older siblings, I think, caught the brunt of the emotional turmoil that I had not experienced. All the classic soap-opera storylines were there. Marriages, children, divorces, infidelities. Not to mention motorbikes, police cells and the occasional ambulance.

I determined that this was not a path I would follow. I would not be like my dad.

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Wind forward 40 years, and our world has moved on. Lives settled. Families as stable and peaceful as they are ever able to be. And relationships rebuilt.

My dad has been married to “the other woman” for more years that he was married to my mother. His new wife developed a crippling brain disease some 15 years ago. The decline has been gruelling and inexorable. Now bed-bound and helpless, she is cared for daily by my dad—now an old man in his late 80s.

He is isolated, frail. A shadow of his former self. And yet every day he wakes and works. Faithfully caring for his wasting wife with a dedication I can scarcely comprehend. We speak on the phone every week, our conversations often turning into an argument about God, religion and the world of suffering he inhabits. He does not, yet, get it.

I avoid the most natural of questions, “How was your week?” Because the answer is always the same. He does not leave the house. His day is one of constant nursing, punctuated only by the rare event of a visitor. And yet he embraces his lot with grit and humour.

Love him, hate him, love him. That’s a pretty normal story arc for many children with their fathers. Mine has been more pronounced.

My teenage resolve to “never be like my dad” has yielded a life of great blessing for me with my wife and family. But now I see a quality that I am envious of.

When and if the time comes for me, I do want to be like my dad.