Forgiving Your Father Ain’t Easy

Father's Day was last Sunday and I'm still thinking about my dad.  You see, for awhile we were, I don't know, not really estranged, but I did have a chip on my shoulder about him.  But I swear, there was something about my wedding, just over a month ago, that seemed to heal both of us.

Here's the deal, remember my Hot Mom who had cancer when I was young?  Luckily, she survived.  However, another tragedy struck my family when I was young, this time to my dad.

Now he's a very proud Irish-Catholic man, a good man.  When he was in his mid-thirties and I was just a little baby, he broke his back on-the-job.  To this day his back is still broken and he has never been the same.

For a long time he couldn't work, couldn't support his family.  And as I mentioned, he's a proud man and this really ate away at him.  It has taken me a long time to both realize this about him and forgive him for how he reacted.

So how did he react? Well, he was and still is in a LOT OF PAIN and every single doctor told him (to this day still tells him this) to take pain killers.  Theses were his doctors, we all trusted them to do the right thing for our family.

I won't go into complete detail because this is my dad.  I will say that my father had an addiction problem. It got bad.  Then one day he realized it and he quit cold turkey.  Told you he was proud.

To this day he is clean.  He has a broken back, works a full time job, and only takes a Tylenol here and there.  That's one strong dude.

I guess I just grew up on my wedding day and thankfully my dad was there with me, or else I could not have done it without him.  There really is something special between a father and his daughter.

I love you dad and you ARE the only one who understands me.  :-)  He gets it.

Happy Father's Day all!