Today is the first Father’s Day that will occur with me knowing the fate of my own father.
(My dad, his other son)
My parents divorced when I was 2–3 and I haven’t seen or heard from my dad since I was 3–4. So my two sisters and I grew up in a single parent household. My mother didn’t remarry, didn’t have a relationship as far as I knew. She’s essentially been devoted to work, education and Christianity.
Over the years I’ve wondered abstractly about my dad. I’ve also wondered what effect his absence has had on me. So far my lack of deference to authority is what stands out.
I’ve also entertained the idea of finding him. Keep in mind that I am resource rich and capable of getting concrete leads on anyone and anything in under two hours. I never really applied this to him though. One casual attempt had him in either NYC or Florida.
I always made excuses. I’d wait until I graduated. I’d wait until I had a good job. I’d wait until I was married. Had a kid. Then I just realized that the life I had was just that, my life. Devoid of his presence but overall not horrible. I didn’t know what he’d add or take away from that and I kinda didn’t want to know.
Flash forward to last year around this time. I’m talking to my mom and she does that annoyingly casual Jamaican parent thing where she drops earth shattering news as an afterthought: “…so I need to go to Food Basics to get the peas that are on sale and oh btw you have a brother.”.
A what? Rewind that. Who? Huh?
Yeah.
As it turns out my father had almost immediately (was there overlap?) started a relationship with someone else and had a couple of kids. His son had created an Ancestry.ca profile and got an alert from my older sister who also has a profile. She then told my mother.
My mother gave me his contact info but it took me about a month to reset and contact him. We talked briefly and exchanged some photos. I remember looking at some of his pix and seeing my father’s face looking at me in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar faces. My brother…half brother…father’s son and I agreed to meet for lunch. Soon after that we met at a Jack Astor’s restaurant.
He was already at the table when I walked on to the patio. He was shorter than me and more lightly complected. I couldn’t see any resemblance but we seemed to have the same mannerisms. We talked about our history and also his life with our father. I’ll keep the details private but he said they had their differences and that things were never easy. He also elaborated on what he had told me over the phone: our father was dead and had been so for a few years. Apparently it was complications from liver failure. I was numb receiving this news. I have developed an armour of apathy over the years and I deployed it in this situation.
I would never receive closure on anything. Why he left and didn’t look back. Why he could ironically start a new family and be loyal to that union. Why we shared certain traits, good and bad. What if anything that I could learn from him.
Unanswered questions.
I left the meeting with my brother ( half brother?) with the promise to stay in touch. We have sporadically, if only by text. He seems more introverted than me and I wonder if our meeting was an opening to new things or just finishing a chapter on his part. Time will tell.