Over.

I’ve always felt I was a disappointment to my father, and he made this clear at many times throughout my life. I know it was his means of tough love — of pushing me to be my best — but the voice in my head that says you are not good enough and you should not think or be different from the accepted norms of society is decidedly his.

Losing our parents is hard and happens at some point to everyone of us. For those with a purely loving relationship this can be filled with only sorrow, grief and fond memories. For others, it’s much more complicated.

You can love someone and fear them at the same time. You can look back on years upon years of wishing things were different and knowing the past is now written in stone and only your future remains to be scripted. You can say goodbye but memories both good and bad live on and circle in your mind.

He was first and foremost a provider. He didn’t work to get famous or lead. An introvert and an actuary he leveraged his mind to ensure comforts over the years. We may have never been wealthy, but we had all we needed and then some. And he went to work each day in the morning and came back late at night, sometimes with a few moments to try to help me with my homework, though that never went well since he couldn’t understand my inability to store math formulas in my head.

He worried about my sister and I a lot. I always wondered if one of us were a boy if the worry would be lessened or different. A few weeks before he died, we spoke on the phone and he told me 3 stories about times when I was very young when I almost died. I wish my memory was better because I only remember one and a half of them — a time he said they left a store and I nearly ran out onto a busy street and once I almost put my hand in an electrical socket…

But his view of me, even though adulthood, was that I was incapable of making good decisions in my life, unless those decisions aligned to his. I was not allowed to be an independent person with her own thoughts and opinions. In having a child I knew he already was running through his mind all the things I would do wrong. This was all how he loved — how he knew how to love — but it didn’t make it any less oppressive.

I wish he learned to manage his temper over the years, to turn off that explosive part of his personality that undoubtedly took a toll on his heart over time. I often wondered how a person could be so angry at everyone in the world but never find or admit to fault in themselves.

There were many happy times as well and I’m trying my best to bring back those memories — long summer nights with my dad happily at the grill flipping hamburgers — one time when he read me the first chapter of The Hardy Boys book series and I fell asleep on the couch (I’ve never been one for books on tape or read by dad) — the rare look of pride in his eyes when I succeeded at something that he deemed mattered — that look of approval I have chased so strenuously my entire life.

But that gaze is forever gone. My achievements no longer must be weighed in worth, even subconsciously, by if my father would find them of value or not. Well, I may still measure my success via this voice in my head — but I know I’ll never again feel the weight of that judgement.

I wish there was a way to go back and convince him that people can we worthy without being perfect. That if he were to only accept himself as a flawed man like the rest of us we wouldn’t be in a constant battle of him against the rest of the world. We may have found a way to relate more as I grew into adulthood.

As I hung up the phone with him unknowingly for the last time last week, the words I love you poured from my mouth. I’m not sure if he heard me or if he had hung up already. I did not think it would be our last call. But I wanted him to know that despite our tumultuous relationship, despite him thinking I’m so rebellious and ungrateful and my thinking he is controlling and unable to see his own flaws while finding too many in others, that all of this doesn’t negate a love and respect I have for him and one I think deep down he has always had for me.

At his funeral last week I mostly held it together. But at the reception after one of his good friends from high school came up to me and said he made a comment about me that “she’s so much like me.” I said thank you, turned away and let the tears pour as I caught my breath.

There was a chance for us to be good friends, but instead we were at best acquaintances. There was a chance for you to learn to manage your anger and realize it wasn’t worth it to lash out time and again and instead to focus on changing what you can control. There was a chance for you to accept that there’s a lesson to be learned from everyone, even if their IQ wasn’t as high as yours.

But that’s all lost now. All lost and gone. The best I can do is try to raise my child, here, asleep on my bare chest with the glow of innocence, to never get to the point where he must deny his flaws or scapegoat onto others but instead to accept imperfection and failure and not knowing the right answer all the time as all wonders to embrace as part of growth. I wish you could meet him and see him grow. But I also will make sure he knows how much grandpa loved him. And I’ll take all you’ve taught me, good and bad and otherwise, and apply it every day as I raise my son to be fearless but kind, determined but humble, and not afraid to be or think different.

I have so much more to say — to write — about you and our lives — for another day.