Recently I’ve been contemplating how to best say goodbye to my father. I’ve had a difficult time for the last 10-15 years with what to do for myself relative to our relationship. He is still alive but I have no contact with him due to his crimes and his behavior. For many of these years, I thought that there might be a way to salvage some portion of our previous relationship. At this point, I don’t see a path back towards each other. I wish that things could have gone another way. I miss the enmeshment. It was familiar. It was what I understood fatherly love to be.

So it’s time to mourn that loss, and the loss of all those expectations. I think I’m going to have a funeral for them, and for the previous version of him. I might even have someone preside over it. Do all the songs and other rituals that accompany funerals. I might just construct it on my own. I might involve other family members. But I think that I need to say my goodbyes in a way that will be a bit more public, or at least sharing with the community that knew him, or maybe the community that knows me.

The challenge with this process is that I feel like I’m betraying him by saying goodbye to him before he is ready. He defined my life and my choices. I didn’t make any major decision without his approval. So to define my life as a space without him in it feels like the ultimate betrayal. So I think that I’ll have to tread carefully, so that I don’t push too far, too fast. Only work on this when it feels right, when I have the right energy.

My current thoughts are that this is also going to be a commencement. It sounds strange, but I think it’s my acknowledgement that my life is my life, not anyone else’s. So maybe it will be part funeral and part emancipation. I’ll need to think on this for a bit more, but I’m proud of myself for this beginning, feeling like it’s the first day of a new life.