Dear father,
It has been a long time since I last wrote you a letter. Time has so rapidly passed that I’ve forgotten the contours of your face. Sometimes, I touch mine just to remember. I often forget that you look back at me in reflection.
A boy undeniably loves his father. From an early age, he is a hero. The man can do no wrong. The boy places his father upon a pedestal of greatness and loves him so deeply that he becomes everything.
A best friend, a mentor, a figure of undivided attention and authority.
That bond between father and son, if nurtured correctly is unlike anything the boy will ever experience. His dad, his hero.
From the moment a man becomes a father, he knows that anyone can be a dad. Anyone can create, but only a father can nurture. Only a real father can take his son by the hand and show him the world.
But things inevitably change.
It isn’t the father’s fault. You did nothing wrong. You were always you. Time passes so rapidly, does it not? In one moment, a son is a boy, doting on his father with heroism in his eyes. He see’s not a single flaw. He’s forgiving and understanding. The love is unconditional.
Until the boy must forge his own path. There comes a time in the evolution of that relationship in which the father is no longer the hero. The cape of elusion once wrapped tightly around his shoulders falls to the floor, revealing a flawed and unique man.
The pedestal breaks.
And the elusion of what you once were comes crashing to the ground, shattering into unending pieces that you cannot stop from fracturing.
The father does not understand this. He forgets that he once had to forge his own path too. Long lost is the memory of that journey. All he see’s now is the boys hand slip from his grasp as he walks in a different direction.
They see each other differently. Their bond is different. Their roles are different. As the boy becomes a man, he no longer looks to his father for direction. He searches for his own path.
That is never easy.
I know that I let go of your hand and broke your heart. As a boy, I idolised you, father. I did not see your flaws. I thought of you as a hero and worshipped the ground you walked without hesitation.
That must have felt good… until I took it all away.
When the dynamic changed, we were no longer man and boy, but two men with two ideologies and paths to be walked.
You tried to pull me back onto yours and the more you did, the harder I forged in the opposite direction. If I knew then what I knew now, I would not have taken it so personally. If I knew then what I knew now about fathers and sons, I’d have known it could have been much worse.
James Faith Jackson taught me that.
I miss you father.
As he will miss his.