Broken Promises

Chapter 25 - Happy 20th Birthday

March 2019

On what would be your 20th birthday, I wrote you this letter...

My beloved baby girl,

Today is your 20th birthday. I am so proud of the young woman you have become. You have impressed me with all your hard work as a sophomore in college. You confront the challenging work, never giving up. Maybe you do not have a 4.0, but that is not important. You are doing the best you can, and you are learning. You even met someone this term, but you quickly realized he was not your person. You were raised to be a strong, independent woman who needs no man. He just was not man enough to accept someone as strong as you. He tried to change you, and no one changes my little girl. I have never been prouder than I was to see you stand up for yourself. Today we are having a huge party for you: balloons, gifts, plush animals, and a huge birthday cake. I tried to make a cake for you, but I had a professional one made just in case. It is 40:60 that my cake will turn out right, but you were worth the attempt. Every year this day is the happiest for me as I remember all the happiness you have had in your life. I remember your little arms around me as a baby, a toddler, a kid, a teen, and a fully grown adult. I remember you calling me daddy and the tears that flowed when I heard those words for the first time. I remember your first steps. I remember you telling me you love me. Nothing has ever been more beautiful than hearing you say those words. These are the memories that a father cherishes. These are the memories that make life have meaning.

And yet, none of this actually happened or will ever happen because your ashes still sit on my bookshelf surrounded by beautiful books that I have a hard time looking at. I am always afraid to look in that direction for fear I will get a glimpse of you that is likely to bring me to my knees. I see your ashes, and the air is vacuumed from my lungs. My soul refuses to breathe and just leaves me suffocating in the abyss. They remind me that you never had a minute of happiness in your short ten years. They remind me that you are gone forever. They remind me how I failed to protect you.

This was the day twenty years ago that I was to hold you for the first time. I was to hear your cries, hug you close, and tell you that I was your father. I was to vow to always love you, always be there for you, and to always protect you. But none of that happened that night either. I failed that final vow minutes before your birth as wrong decisions were made by doctors as I sat by trusting them when every core of my being said things were wrong. Because the day that was to be the best of my life, and yours, became the beginning of our worst nightmare. It was the day I became and started to unbecome a father. An unbecoming that took ten years. Maybe I lied to myself so that I could survive, but the unforgivable was that I promised you that you would be okay. That lie can never be forgiven.

Again, all I ever wanted to be in life was a father. I was so happy the day I learned I would be and that you would be my little girl. Those nine months were the happiest of my life. I had a purpose. And that first day of your life was the last time I was ever truly happy. My purpose then became to care for you, to ensure you had every chance possible for some semblance of a normal life. It was ten years of total devotion to the most important little girl to have ever existed. You were my soul, my universe, my purpose, my little girl.

A father gives up being a father as they sign the papers to let their little girl die when that is the only way her pain can stop. I realized that by delaying the inevitable, I was causing you more hurt. I realized I was being selfish. I realized you needed me to break myself beyond repair so that you could be free. So that you could stop hurting. It is at that moment I realized my pain could never end. My soul died with you. It fractured into infinite sharp pieces that sliced away all that was once me. Pieces small as dust that can never again be whole. My purpose ended with your last breath. The machines were turned off, your breathing slowed, and I watched the life drain from your fragile little body. I watched as death took what death wanted and then I was left without. I was left no longer being a father. I was left without that title. I realized I never deserved it because I never could protect you. And maybe I was never even a father to begin with. Maybe that was a lie as well. As I saw my inked signature, I knew I failed at the only thing in life that mattered to me, being your father. You deserved someone better. You deserved someone worthy to be called your dad.

Every year around this time I awaken with the nightmares of failing you, of watching you die over and over, and hearing you ask why I could not protect you, why I did not love you enough to make it better, of why I lied that you would be okay. Nightmares so horrific that I wake in tears, shaking uncontrollably, unable to breathe.

I try to imagine who you would have been, but I do not deserve to know. I know I will never be a father, never hold a grandchild, and maybe that is the way it should be. Every year I will beg you to forgive me, knowing that I never will. But man did I love you. No daughter in the history of the universe was loved as much as I loved and still love you. Maybe it was the only thing I did right.

And this is why as far as I am concerned, March 9th can burn in hell for failing you as I did. I am so, so sorry baby girl that you had me for a father.

Love,

Your dad

October 25, 2019

There has been a day I have been dreading for over ten years. October 25, 2019. It marked the day you have been dead longer than you were alive. It was a day I feared for many years, but whose presence I had felt clawing at the back of my soul for the last year. It was like this little voice that kept getting closer and louder...the day is coming.

I have no idea what this date means. For a while, I thought it might be the time when things would be normal again or things would begin to make sense. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am no closer to acceptance. Things are not any easier. The pain is no less than it was ten years ago. I have no grand epiphanies. No valued wisdom.

It just feels wrong. That is the only way I can describe it. It feels like a fault in the universe that should have been corrected but was left on the pages of time, a permanent error, a flaw in the universe. The only thing that has changed is more memories get lost, and I fear how long that will continue. It feels like I just keep losing more of you.

I shared this date with a member of my family. Someone I love very much. Her response, while well meaning was "you have to let it go and chose to be happy." I just do not see how that is possible. This person lost you as well and would have laid down her life to save you if she could. She has lost sisters, brothers, and a mother. She does understand the loss. I just do not know how you can just let go of unnatural loss. I do not know how you cannot see a friend's child and think for a fraction of a second about who your little girl might have been in that situation. It is forever in your mind. It lurches to the front as it pleases. It is insidious and cruel.

Someone told me recently when I shared that I was writing a book about you that it needed to be shared as it would help others learn that things get better. That is what people want to believe. That is what many will tell you. It gets better. It just takes time. If you want to believe a lie, then stop reading here.

As I later shared with another friend who experienced her own trauma, the truth is that things do not get better. A person is no less lost over time. The pain is no less. The brokenness in the soul is no less jagged. If anything, it gets worse. I think the point might be that we need to be honest with people and tell them this truth. They will never be whole again.

Maybe that is the message people need to hear. Life will never be okay again. If they are lucky, they will have that one person they trust to tell this to as the others in their life think they can put it behind them. But they will never feel normal again. They will always be that abandoned fragment.