I didn’t have my father growing up, not my biological one anyway.  My mother explained to me, at a very young age, that the two of them had married young and I was a bit of a surprise to them, one that he just wasn’t quite ready for, so he had elected to walk away from both of us.  Of course, the news was disheartening to me, as it would be for any little girl at that age, but I was fortunate enough to have another man in my life, my mother’s boyfriend, who had chosen to be a father to me so the news really wasn’t as bad as it could have been for me.  My father’s absence had left me with a lot of questions and I couldn’t grasp how easy it had been for him to just walk away and forget his family, his only child, but I suppose I attributed it to his immature age.

I was seven years old when my mother and I were at a store and saw a woman holding a baby in her arms.  It was my father’s new wife and newborn son.  I remember that, more than being upset was my desire to meet them, talk to them and let them know who I was but, of course, my mother would never have allowed it so we walked away in silence.  My mother speaks of another time, when I was about four years old, that we saw my father and his family gathered at the park for a reunion and, even though they had clearly seen me, they all turned their heads the other way.

I always understood that my father just wasn’t going to be a part of my life and I accepted it without any other choice, but I could never understand how he could raise his second child without wanting to know his first.  A small part of me thought that he would contact me one day and explain his reasons for not being around but I always peered through the crowds in the mall or in stores, wondering if one of those men was him.  I had seen only a single photo of him that had been taken before I was born so I wouldn’t have known him if he was staring straight at me.  Still, I always looked for a man who favored me and for a boy, his son, who shared some of my features.

One day, when I was 21 and living on my own, I met a man through a mutual friend who turned out to be my father’s brother.  We had already interacted on several occasions without even realizing our common bond.  I resisted the temptation to assault him with questions about my father but I was certain that he would mention to him that he had met me, perhaps encouraging my father to do the same, especially since I was an adult.  Still, it never happened.

I went on with my life, got married and had a son of my own and, one day, when I was in my thirties, I received a Facebook message from my father’s son, introducing himself to me as my brother.  It was such a strange feeling even reading the word “brother” because I had always been an only child.  He was in his late twenties with a child of his own, a daughter.  I confirmed that I was, in fact, his sister and expressed to him my surprise that he had been told about me, given the fact that our father had never acknowledged me.  Strangely enough, we haven’t spoken since then.

A few years later, I received a call from someone who mentioned that my father was dying of cancer, his second bout, and that if I ever wanted to see him, it was time.  An unfamiliar blend of empathy and anger rushed through me, urging me to go get the apology that I deserved from him while showing him the daughter he missed out on, but the phone call hadn’t come from his family.  It had actually come from someone in my husband’s family who just happened to know him.  The request to visit him hadn’t come from him.  Even on his deathbed, my father seemingly still had no desire to see me, which took away any desire that I had to see him.  It was only about a week later when I came home from work to find the most vibrantly colored cardinal that I had ever seen lying dead on my covered front porch, something that had never happened before.

“That’s a sign that someone has died,” my cousin informed me, an epiphany that I had never before heard.  She was right because an hour later, I received word that my father had died that day.  That cardinal symbolized, to me, the acknowledgment that I had never gotten from him.

I still wrestle with the fact, sometimes, that I will never get the explanation or apology that I felt I deserved from my father, and I have never heard from any of his family, but maybe, just maybe, that beautiful cardinal on the porch that day was the only sign that I ever really needed and I’m truly okay with that.