Today my mother called me with the words, "Well, your Grandpa died this morning." We were expecting this, so it wasn't a shock. But, what was it?
For the past two months I've had mixed emotions about him since she told me the truth about him and my other grandparents. The people I idolized, yet, in my now late grandfather's case, feared and respected. He was, afterall, the Patriarch of our family, on both my Mother's and Father's side. I always loved him but sometimes hated his visits, as from sunup to sundown, he would preach at the kitchen table and everyone of us was going to hell for one reason or another.
My emotions about him are jumbled. I'm glad for him that he's no longer suffering, and I'm glad that the last time he spoke to my mother, the one he physically and emotionally abused, he told her he loved her and he hung up.
When Mom was here visiting me, she told me secrets about him and she was angry and hurting, but I guess she's made peace with that, knowing that it was just the way he was, and there was nothing that would ever change him. He was still her Dad.

While speaking with my sister-in-law about my Grandfather and my mom, she mentioned my own dad and said he'd been asking about me and asking for my phone number. She had not had my previous permission to give it out, so she told him she didn't have it. For two years, I never heard from my father...read my page "A Thousand Acres" and you will see what that respect and miscommunication caused.
For two years, I've let my anger and hatred grow, I've been to therapy, I've written a letter not to be sent and one to be sent to my father, just to get it out of my system. No matter what she told me, I would not let the armour down regarding my father. There was NO excuse. She told me she had experienced a similar situation with her father a while back. We spoke again about my mother and how she is ok with the passing of her father because she apparently realized that he would never change and she needed to just get over it, get on with her own life, and be as happy as possible. One thing, though, Mom talked to Grandpa and told him how he had always made her feel and he told her he never meant to. I guess that was how they ended things.

Well, here I was still angry, and Carol knew it. She knew of the letter I intended to send to my dad. She asked me to please just call him, she gave me his phone number and address, in case I would rather write. But she did ask me to consider that it was all circumstantial and he still loved me and missed me and didn't have any idea where I was.
I wasn't going to call him today, as I had enough to deal with. But, I thought about it, and realized that this was the perfect time to call him, tell him how I felt and get it overwith.
He picked up the phone, when I told him who I was, he replied with, "Oh, Sherrie, thank God! I heard about your grandpa and I'm so sorry for your loss." I told him I was fine with that and I was not calling him to discuss Grandpa, but to tell him how I feel about him now, after two years of a festering wound of feeling abused again. He graciously and apologetically accepted my emotional beating. He cried and pleaded with me to forgive him for this. He honestly had no way of finding me, as no one seemed to know how to contact me. He said he doesn't remember ever telling me he was too busy to talk to me and hanging up. He couldn't imagine ever doing such a thing. But this is a man who didn't even recognize himself in a picture I had of him in my album, because he had grown a mustache at that time. But he was adamant that the man in the picture was NOT him, He NEVER grew a mustache in his life.

My father is mentally ill, I know this. There is nothing I can do to change that. He probably does love me, I'm sure he does. But, sick people love differently. They also have horrible memory lapses. No matter how angry I was with him, as he said, "Sherrie, you're a Christian, you can't keep hate in your heart." I have to say at that moment I almost hung up on him, as I felt he was using that as a way to get to me. But, I hadn't finished telling him that "I hate" him. I hadn't finished telling him there were no valid excuses for cutting off your own children, especially after all we've been through and the fact that he begged for a real relationship with me. I would never forgive him for that. He didn't try hard enough. All my anger and hatred came spewing out at him, and I heard him choking and crying and trying to explain to his wife that it was ME on the phone and he lied and told her that I was very upset about the passing of my grandfather. He didn't want her to know that I was giving him the beating of his life, and he had to take it, if he wanted anything more to do with me. He said he deserved it.

Yes, I do have to forgive him...I have to eat a lot of crow, when I said I'd never forgive him for turning his back on me and the others. I am a Christian. I still feel this cold steel wall, or maybe a fence with razor wire up around me where he is concerned. It's protection, as I told him, I will NEVER give him the opportunity to ever abuse me or use me and hurt me again. I am in control of this situation. Yes, it feels good to know that I am an independent being, and I am allowed to express my feelings, whatever they may be, to the man who brought me here, and he owed me a lot. It was this or we would never be in contact EVER again. He understood and thanked me for at least giving him this opportunity to make up to me for something he hadn't meant to cause, but did.

I had to think about my mother and HER father and where they stood today when he passed away. Is she all right? Does she feel that it was unfinished? Has she given it up to the Lord and is happy to just go on with her own life? If she can forgive her father, and she can give it to the Lord, and if she was able to do this before he died....that's what I want, too. Peace. To know that there is still a forgiving bone in my body. That I still walk with Christ in my heart. That until his dying breath, everything is forgivable.

BUT IT HAD TO BE MY DECISION. I had to make the decision to either bite the bullet and contact him and give him just a minimal amount of space to ask forgiveness after I'd been so dead set on no more forgiveness, or to just send that letter I had written and cut all my ties to him and disown him as my father, period, and forget it all.
In all honesty, would that EVER really happen? I doubt it. I'd still think about it from time to time and wonder about him. If he ever thought about us, his own children. It would never end. And then, how would I honestly feel if I got the call, as I got today about my mother's father, that MY father died? Would I just shrug it off, or would I mourn and hate myself for not giving him the opportunity to make things right between us, or at least acceptable. Even if he would have NOT taken my call the way he did this morning, and he would have just decided to end it all with me, to never have any relationship with me again, at least it would have been some kind of closure. But, perhaps, God is with me and he guided me to do the right thing. I leave that judgement up to Him, the Almighty.