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Being Fatherless on Father’s Day Sucks

- by Jennifer Cooper

This year on Father’s Day, I’m thinking about all of the people who are without fathers who are now passed and have to move on.

Usually one will give a reference or a tidbit at the end of the story offering some form of emotional resolve. Dash all hopes that I will offer a solution in this essay. Do not hope that it will be a parable or metaphor which will resonate and give some degree of solace of the fact that you are on Father’s Day without a father.

I want to dismay and remove any of those hopes. There is nothing in this essay that will make you feel better about the fact of your not having a father on Father’s Day.

Loneliness sucks. And any essay attempting to cure you from that loneliness is a fool hearty attempted at  best. There is nothing I can say in this essay to make you feel better about not having your father alive or around. Simply put, it sucks.

And to make matters worse you don’t realize how bad it sucks until it starts to suck. My three girls have a father that I will appreciate the times who bends over backwards for them. But of course, that is the irony of life that one doesn’t miss something until it’s gone.

So what takeaway can I give you, dear reader of this essay? What solace can I give you in the fact of the pain you’re going through all this Father’s Day?

All I can offer you is acknowledgment. See, there are some things that absolutely suck in the world and this is one of them. But I can’t change this and nobody can. I can’t make it better and if anything attempted can only make it worse.

But in a way, that is my secret hidden ending to the essay. That is the secret solace that I was going to surprise you wiith.

It is. It is what it is.

Some things in this world simply suck: cancer, drugs, taxes and death. They suck. They are quite terrible and upsetting.

There is nothing that I could say to make the pain disappear. But, if we can’t change these things in the world, the least I can do is let you know that I understand what you’re going through. I understand your pain, maybe not exactly, but in some way I’m familiar with it. That does not make it easier, that does not make it better, but some of these pains are inevitable facts of life.

So to you, our dear reader who got all the way to the end: I cannot offer you resolve, I cannot offer you change but I can only offer you one thing and that is understanding. Yes, sometimes life can suck.

So go out, have a good time today, do your best to smile knowing that you are not the only one going to the human condition that we all are suffering from.

Jennifer Cooper