Pops

I have been thinking a lot about my biological father. He died last Christmas, in what was in every way the worst Christmas ever.

He had cancer, in his lung, the end product of a lifetime of smoking multiple packs of cigarettes, and today my brother wrote about the last time we saw him.

The cancer had metastesized to his brain, leaving him weak and very erratic, but as we were saying goodbye/ iloveyou he looked up at me and said I love you. You know that, right? And I said yes, Daddy. I do. I do know that. And he turned to my brother and said, I wasn't a very good father to you guys. And we looked at each other, my brother and I, because it was all too true. He hadn't been a very good father, but he was the father we had and both of us had long ago come to terms with the abandonment and it's concomitant issues a long time ago.

And my brother said "You were the dad that we had." And my father settled down a bit, and started talking about the estate, which I think in his mind was the only way he could make up for our history, a history that at that point was still very much the present for him.

I didn't know what I would feel when my father died, but 8 months in I can tell you that I miss him more than I ever would have thought possible, that it catchs me unaware more often than he would believe.

I had hoped that we could develop a relationship with our surviving relatives, my father's sister and mother, but my aunt is the executrix of the estate and has chosen not to answer any of our questions, and so my brother and I have withdrawn from them, not unlike the way they withdrew from us when our parents divorced.

The only one who even has a glimpse of what I feel is my brother, and we don't discuss it. It is not our way, to talk about deeply felt things. After all, we already know, so why hash it over?