Life Gave Us a Second Chance and Then You Were Dead
Talking about the importance of not waiting. Reconciling. Being at peace with your decisions, efforts, and how you treat one another. Thinking we have more time and we don’t. The cost of suppression.
Written: April 30, 2025
There comes a day when we all have to pay for the life we lived. I pray I will be able to pay in a form that leaves a genuine spirit, a loving soul, a giver and one who lived with the best intentions whose impact matched and superseded. When that day comes, I want to be at rest and I wish that was his ending.
Life gave us a second chance and the next time I saw my father was in a hospital bed – brain dead.
Table of Contents
Let me rewind. I grew up with the best father a child could ask for. I never wanted for anything. I never knew what it felt like to long for a parent’s attention. I always knew my father would be by my side for life. He built his life with his bare hands. Literally. I watched him build our dream home and build the life he wanted to cultivate. To me and to so many others, my father was the epitome of what a black man should be. Strong, physically and mentally, reliable, a protector, a provider, a man’s man, a father, and a husband.
We were good. Most of the time we were great. My sister, my mother, my father and I had a strong, solid family foundation. But when we cracked, we did not have the tools to fill in the gaps that would break our foundation to no return. Where did it all go wrong? Was it all one moment? No, but an accumulation of daily life, trauma, suppressed emotions, longing for change, an unhappy marriage, societal pressures, and maybe a family that developed into a burden instead of a blessing.
One major turning point was… Afghanistan. My father spent 10 years in a war torn country as a civilian contractor working in HVAC. Ten years. To put it into context, I was in 6th grade (2009) when he left and when he officially came home for good, I was graduating college (2019). He was not the same man, the same father, the same friend, or the same husband when he returned. I already knew, because he started showing symptoms of PTSD at least 5 years before his return. What I did not foresee was how I was not going to be a part of his journey moving forward.
He came home and everything changed for the worse. I thought we would catch up, go to our favorite spots like the Tavern, grab some snowballs and ride on the lake. Enjoy each other’s company and get to know one another again. Throughout the 10 years, he would come home 2-3 times out of the year for about 1 – 2 weeks. Then the visits became less frequent and shorter the longer he stayed away.
Now we are going to skip ahead, because this story could get long. I’ll share the details on how PTSD, suppressed emotions, lack of communication within family affected not just me, but our family and friends in a later blog. For now, back to how Life Gave Us a Second Chance and Then You Were Dead.
The Second Chance
5 years after he returned home, my dad’s best friend, my sister’s Pawran (Parrain aka Godfather) set up a meeting between me, my sister and my father. The year is now 2024 of March. We had no form of contact since 2019/early 2020. No Covid checkups, birthdays, holidays etc. I was a little shocked to see him when he pulled up. He got older. He has more grays on his head. Is he limping? Did he just pull up in a Lexus truck with the red interior… also known as one of the goal cars my mother wanted? 5 years ago you were “broke” and exhausted. Why am I so nervous and numb to see a man I’ve known my whole life? All of this ran through my mind while I watched him climb the stairs and into the room.
The meeting lasted an hour and 18 minutes. There were a lot of excuses and going around the point.
Ultimately, REJECTION. My father feared rejection from us which held him back from contacting his daughters. He feared the very same feeling he gave us. He told himself a lie for so long he believed the lie to be true. An hour into the conversation, my father began to admit it was fear of rejection, not actual rejection that kept him from us. For almost an hour, my sister and I had to remind him of the no text backs, the no phone calls, the ghosting he did. We asked him the hard questions.
“After your transition, when you started to come out of the dark place, why did you not contact us? How can you start a new family and not reach out to your blueprints? How can you say, in the present day, you will always be there for us but have not been?”
It all circled back to a false narrative he created to keep himself safe. Fear of rejection, fear of being seen as human, not knowing how to reach out, not learning how to express oneself as a Black man and excuses. Oh the excuses…
Voice Memo
This recording was the first and last time I heard my father’s voice in over 4 years.
At the end of the meeting, he said he wanted a relationship again. He said he would put forth the effort. We left the ball in his court as it always had been. Did I have faith he would follow through, no. But boy was I hoping he proved me wrong. As uncomfortable as it would have been to reconnect, I would have gladly taken that versus the familiarity of my father being a stranger.
Life gave us a second chance and 8 months later he was dead. He died 2 days before his birthday. My father died a stranger to me. Within the last 5 years, I only saw and heard my father twice – at the meeting and on his deathbed. He did not live long enough to come back to me. He did not make good on his promise and put forth the effort he wanted to in order to be back in our lives. There were no follow up calls or texts after that meeting.
A second chance, more like a third chance, that fell through empty hands. A man who was not ready and did not know how to surrender, but only move as is. A known comfort which costs more than he could conceptualize.
Being At Peace
I am at peace with my efforts. There were 2 times after his death and once during the meeting i wondered, “Should I have been relentless and kept reaching out with no response? Did I let go in a healthy way or in a way which was similar to his disappearance?”. Then one day I stopped.
I realized I was not helping his situation and potentially causing more harm. Maybe I overwhelmed him and the no response was the message he wanted to give. Who knows…
How many times do I have to reach out before I learn the behavior of chasing unwanted attention? I fear I may have developed a piece of this.
So, Here Are My Truths
I love my father + I hated his ego.
I love my father + I hated his fears.
I love my father + I hated his false reality.
I love my father + I hated how we were collateral for his pain.
I love my father + I hated how he gave everyone else his new light.
I love my father + I hope I learn how to balance letting go
I love my father + I hope I fight for what I want healthily
I love my father + he tried.. Just not enough
I love my father + I hope he is resting + healed.
Love,
