How Do You Honor The Dad You Never Met?

Julie McGue

Author

I could use some advice.

We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death and I’m uncertain about how to honor it. You see, my father was a mystery to me. It’s not that I didn’t understand him, although that is certainly true. He was an enigma to me because we never met. Meeting me was not on my birth father’s to-do list. Much of my immediate family claims that the fact we never met is his loss, but in reality it is very much my loss too.

I’ll be honest. I would have liked to have met his gaze, offered him my hand, or held both of his hands in mine. I would have accepted a hug and returned it warmly. In fact any form of acknowledgement would’ve been appreciated. It may not be entirely his fault, but ultimately he made the choice not to engage with me. Let me explain. My birth dad’s second wife is a very reluctant stepmother. She put her foot down about any and all communications with my twin sister and me. She isn’t crazy about my birth dad’s kids with his first wife either.

In hindsight, I could have tried to view my sperm donor from afar. However, jumping in the car and driving three hours just to watch him mow his grass, pick up the morning paper, or strike a golf club had felt like stalking. Now that he’s gone, it seems crazy that I didn’t do it at least once. In my defense, he had warned me in the only letter I received from him to not contact him for any reason. An obedient first born, I complied and now I must forever debate my inaction.

When he died of a sudden heart attack almost a year ago, my birth dad was immediately cremated. My half-siblings, the children that he raised into vibrant twenty-somethings, learned of his death by mail, postmarked in an envelope with the funeral parlor’s return address. When my brother received the cold hard news, he called me. I was standing in the kitchen of a home we’d rented for my daughter’s college graduation. Conflicted as how to grieve, I set it aside for another day.

Over 360 days have passed since the day my stranger-father died. I’ve never shed a tear. I have however felt regret that he never changed his mind, that he chose not to buck the will of his selfish second wife, and that he didn’t offer to meet up in a coffee shop somewhere. That he chose never to communicate by email, text or phone is also a puzzle to me. Out of sight, out of mind feels like the right cliché.

To honor the passing of this stranger-father of mine, I know not where to go. If there are ashes in an urn, they are in a place where I am not welcome. If some of his remains are interred, the news of that locale has not come. It appears that there’s no place to honor him, except in my mind.

So what do you do to honor the dead if you never knew them? Say a prayer? Hold a moment of silence? I am considering those options.

What I do know is this: I will be in touch with all of my birth dad’s offspring- my twin sister and my new brother and sister- and I will remind them that I know today is the day that the father that links us to one another passed away. That is all I can offer for a man I didn’t know.

What would you do?

“So what do you do to honor the dead if you never knew them?”

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