by Ed Ostrom

Created on: January 04, 2009

How often over the last forty years have I wished that I would have had just one more day with my Dad. It would have been a day when I would have had an opportunity to sit down with him and tell him what was on my heart. An opportunity to express my hurt and pain. A time for reconciliation, forgiveness and healing. How often I longed for just one opportunity to have a chance to make things right with my father. It is the one regret I have in my life. It never happened when he was alive.

Perhaps you will have a clearer understanding of where I am coming from if I attempt to tell you my story. I grew up in a large family. I was the eldest of seven children. My father was a hard worker that tried to support his family to the best of his ability. My father was well liked by everyone. The problem was my father loved to drink on weekends. When he drank he became a happy drunk .He was the life of the party. But when my dad drank he became very verbally abusive to his family, and in particular to me, the oldest child. When he was drinking he would often belittle me in front of my peers and friends. He said mean and cruel things that cut me to the very depths of my young heart. He often told me the world would have been far better off if I had never been born. He told me I would never amount to anything. I was stupid and dumb So I went through my school years seldom answering questions because .He warned me never to open my mouth at school and answer the teacher's question because if I did everyone would know how really dumb I was . He told me that "I was more useless than the nipples on a boar pig!" Through out my school years and into adulthood I often could hear his voice in the back of my head, constantly playing the old tapes over and over. I did not believe in myself. It almost became a self realizing prophecy in my life. I felt like a failure and because of fear of failing, I almost became a failure.

My Father died of lung cancer when he was fifty-four years old. I was still in College. The last couple of years before his death he was estranged from our family. He had moved to Northern Alberta, while we continued to live in North West Saskatchewan. We had little or no contact with him. When he died unexpectedly I attended his funeral. During the whole ceremony I never shed one tear for my Father. After the funeral I returned to college and life went on.

I never had an opportunity to talk to my Father about how I felt about his put downs. I never got an opportunity to forgive him and seek reconciliation with him. It has been the greatest regret of my life. The only way I found healing from the hurt and pain I suffered growing up at home was to journal what I felt. A few months after my father's passing I went in the City of Toronto to a small cemetery. While there I sat down by an old gravestone. It was weather beaten and the former name on the stone had been eroded away by time and the elements. I pretended it was the grave stone of my Father. I sat down and read out loud a long letter I had written to my father in which I expressed my hurt and pain. I asked him to forgive me if I hurt him, and I expressed my forgiveness to him for hurting me. In that moment a great sense of relief came over my inner being. I felt healed. My sense of self esteem was restored. Truly this was a real healing for me and inner spirit. .

God was gracious to me and allowed me to come to a place of forgiveness in my life. I was able to forgive my father for all that he had done. I never had the experience of an extra day with my father; but I found the joy of being able to forgive and forget. Praise God!

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