I’m running pretty fast on the outskirts of my San Francisco neighborhood. The sun is breaking through the fog and I am in a pretty good mood. I am three miles into my almost daily five mile run. The wireless headphones are pumping the sounds through my ears down through my body as I feel at one with my surroundings.

The next song that comes on is Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love me” and I suddenly feel blindsided by thoughts and emotion. A shocking blast of words comes up that I have been dancing around for decades. My father died almost forty seven years ago and I have done a lot of work attempting to grieve his abrupt loss. He died unexpectedly of a stroke when I was fifteen years old.
Something was triggered by Bonnie’s great song about heartache; a new dreaded, overwhelming question comes through all the cobwebs: “Did my father love me?” The answer that immediately follows is “no”.

I am really struggling right now and am looking through memories for some evidence that he did indeed love me. I remember my father scowling much of the time. I don’t remember him reassuring and instilling confidence. He was good at protecting; to the point where he didn’t allow us to make our own mistakes. He was good at making me fearful and lost in his presence and in the aftermath of his death.

I have a faint memory of him putting his arm around me, but I can’t remember him ever telling me that he loved me. Maybe he felt that there was plenty of time for that. There wasn’t. Maybe he did show or tell me he cared, but so much time has gone by; many of my childhood memories have probably been forgotten.

I have been working towards and avoiding the question of whether he loved me since the day he died. Now the question is here right in front and center. The question is surrounded by words and music spreading the hurtful message that my father is indifferent towards me. I have no way of breaching this issue with him because he is dead.

Of course this has always been a huge issue for me. At the age of fifteen, I was confused, lonely, needy, and without faith in myself or anyone else. My father couldn’t have died at a worse time. One of my last memories of him was when he was angry at me and he came across the room to hit me, but I punched him in the stomach instead. He doubled over and never talked to me again. I had hoped he would retaliate and punish me for being the bad son I was. After all, what kind of boy punches his father?

One that is tired of getting hit, that’s who. But, the guilt I have carried and released over time in a constant cycle has worn me down as I keep getting closer to the truth.

My father did love my mother. His desire for having a solid family was motivated by the fact that his parents neglected him and abused him. I don’t know this for sure, but I am always trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

I think I always reminded my dad of how fragile and unsafe he felt when he was a child. These feelings would trigger him to strike out as well as ignore me. He couldn’t really love me if he couldn’t love the child part of himself. I wish he was here so I could help him.
I have the sense that this is what he went through because it is a pattern that I know all too well. Feeling unsafe distorts your judgment and creates impulsive, angry behavior.

When you are fifteen, you have no real sense of mortality. You don’t have any real reading on anything. I feel like I have been peeling back the layers of facing my father’s death since that fateful day he became invisible. The shock was so powerful and the pain so deep, I have been grieving him slow step by slow step.

My father was almost an Olympic skier, a great tennis player and a skilled ice skater. He never took us skiing because I found out later that he felt that it was too expensive. He had no patience for me when it came to teaching me how to ice skate or play tennis. It was like if I didn’t get it the first time around, then too bad-you don’t get a second chance.

He seemed to be more interested in other boys in my neighborhood who were good at chess. He would let me beat him in checkers and think that I was too stupid to know that’s what he was doing.

I remember he ended up writing an entire science paper for me in seventh grade. This taught me that I was not smart enough to do it myself. He didn’t like me participating in team sports where they would remove you from the team if you were not good enough. Yet he attended all my little league and football games in high school. When I did well, he never acknowledged those moments.

I remember him always being disappointed in me, but not having the skills or inclination to help me improve.
When my grade school teachers would tell my parents how poorly I was doing or when the high school guidance counselor told them standardized tests indicated that I was not smart enough to go to college, I don’t remember him uttering a word to me.

He never found his passion when it came to a job and he died shortly before he may have opened up his own garden supply store. My path was different because I have found joy in my work as a psychotherapist and author.
I will never know if he really loved me or not and in ways that is worse than knowing that he didn’t. I have been looking for definitive answers about this connection with my father for forty seven years now.

My first book Redemption of the Shattered focused on how his death affected me. I thought I discovered resolution by having discussions with his spirit and felt that his spirit really loved me. But his spirit is not him in the flesh; so I have come to downplay this spirit discussion.
I have longed to have real conversations with him and desperate to make him come alive. This is never going to happen. I am left without knowing how he really felt about me and I will have to find a way to be OK with this.

I have also done a lot of inner world work where I get in touch with the different parts that make up the total me. The teenager, healing woman, wise man are familiar characters. Suddenly I notice a little boy I have never been in contact with before. He looks to be about nine years old. His face is all cut up and his right arm is in a sling. He looks scared and distraught. His external wounds don’t hurt nearly as bad as his heart does. He feels alone and nervous.

I say to him, “I want you to walk into this sunlight that I am providing for you. The warmth of this sun can be there for you whenever you want it. You don’t have to solve the mystery of your father’s death to have it. You don’t need his love either because you have mine.” The wise man, teenager, healing woman and I all join the boy. We all rejoice in the land of the sun; appreciating the moment and knowing that this isn’t the end of the story.

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