When you watch television shows and movies, you have anywhere from a half-hour to an hour where people in relationships experience a problem and by the end of the episode or movie, they have identified the problem or resolved it. One person is stubborn for fifteen minutes and then within another thirty minutes, they come to the conclusion that they were wrong, and they apologize. Everyone hugs and all is forgiven. This isn’t real life, but we think because we see it on television that people are capable of it.
The reality is that most of us won’t receive an apology or any type of closure to relationships that we considered significant.
Don’t allow me to make you feel like you don’t deserve it. You do. But you may never get it and I don’t want you to remain stuck in those feelings forever because you didn’t get the apology you deserve.
How do you move on when the person who hurt you refuses to tell you why they hurt you or to even acknowledge their wrongdoing and validate your pain?
For me, the most notable experience of not receiving closure, but having to find a way to move on is when my father died.
My father was in my life from the ages of 0 to 7 which psychology has proven are the most important years of your life and which basically shape your attachment style. I remember he used to spend time with me that seemed innocuous like watching television or walking around the neighborhood, but I valued it.
When my parents divorced, I lost my relationship with my father. He faded in and out of my life over the years. But, when I was 18, we pretty much lost touch. I was on my own and once I stopped contacting him, he stopped contacting me.
Years later, in my 20’s, I received a call from a hospital in San Diego when I was in Philadelphia. They told me that my Father was in a coma. They didn’t expect him to live and I had to decide whether he lived or died. So many questions ran through my mind, but it was as if I was making a decision about a stranger. I didn’t know what he wanted because I didn’t know him. I thought about how I could bury him if I could barely afford rent. I asked them for a day to call them back.
When I called back, they told me that my father had spontaneously woken up and I actually felt relieved. I didn’t talk to him. We continued to operate in silence. A near-death experience didn’t even prompt him to become apart of my life.
Fast forward to when I was in my late 30’s and I was asleep when my sister was banging on my front door and my phone was ringing at the same time. My boyfriend opened the door as I answered the phone. My older brother was telling me that my father had died. I heard the words, but I went numb. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. My sister burst into the room, she hugged me then sat on the beds staring at me. I felt like I was supposed to cry or break down, but I didn’t know him. He wasn’t a beloved family member. He was a stranger. Slowly, I started to understand what it meant. I was his only child. It was on me to put him to rest. I had to do for him in death what he had never done for me in life. Give him peace.
I flew with my older brother and my boyfriend to Texas from Philadelphia to make funeral arrangements. I remember that I kept thinking that I don’t know what this man wants from me. My Aunt, his sister, did most of the work in choosing how the memorial would happen. I had to meet family that I didn’t even know. Everyone was looking for me to create instant connections when I actually felt anger coursing through my veins. I had a whole family that ignored me just like my father.
My older brother and boyfriend kept me from thinking too deeply and I was just going through the motions. The hardest thing was going through his apartment and deciding whether to throw things away or keep them. As I went through his things, I got a sense of the man he had been without me. I kept wondering if he missed me. I kept wondering if he cared that I wasn’t there. I couldn’t understand how he lived his life every single day without knowing if I was happy or okay.
I found that he kept a card I made him when I was six years old. He kept a clipping of an article I wrote in high school that was published in the paper. He kept my picture in his wallet. I wanted it all to make me feel better, but it made me feel terrible. It was all proof that he chose to stay away.
I buried him and I gave the other people that loved him what I felt they needed. I didn’t lock my feelings away. They are complicated and mixed and that is how they will forever be. He didn’t clear anything up and I don’t have his side of the story. But I found closure because I honored myself in the situation and I accepted his choices. If he decided that he didn’t want to know me then there is nothing I did wrong and that was his choice. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t worth knowing. I gained closure by understanding that there was something within him that found it easier to be without me than with me.
Moving on isn’t because it’s wrapped up in a neat little bow. It’s because it’s jagged and you just refuse to keep dragging yourself over it and reopening the wounds when it’s not your pain that is dictating the decisions.
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