A Son's Letter to His Father

Dear Father,


I hope this letter reaches you in good health. I pray that everyone is doing well and the times have been kind to you and yours. I wanted to send you this letter as a means of thanking you and the family for the kind words and gifts you have given both myself and my newly wed wife. We both thank you from the bottom of our hearts and those same sentiments and loving words are echoed in both our hearts. The amount of time that has passed since we were last together, as a family, has been long and tedious, for all of those involved. It has been almost a decade since I last spent a weekend or even a simple lunch hour with you and your family. Ten years is a long time for a son to go without seeing one of his parents. As I have now started a family and hope to be a father one day, I have come to realize that the past is simply that: the past. It’s time to move on with one’s life and learn to forgive and most of all forget. So many things have happened in our lives since we last parted. I have had more surgeries, which have changed my life significantly, have completed high school and college, have found the love of my life and married her, have started a good career as a computer programmer, gotten my first book published and have seen my writing career take off. So much in the span of ten years, so much that I have wished you could have been around for. For years, I thought I hated you. I will not lie to you and say that I always said good things about you. I didn’t. The rage, the fury, the pain…all of it was present for those years and it slowly drove me to consider you the worst person in my life. Harsh words I know, but it is the truth. Those emotions lay dormant for years afterwards as I grew up and slowly turned into feelings of apathy and numbness. I had forgotten you.

But with time, all things change. I have changed. You have changed. We all have changed. I am now a man; a husband and in the future, I too shall be a father. You are the same as me in that respect. We are both adults, having lived our own separate yet equal lives. My thoughts have turned to you for quite some time now. I often wondered how you were, what you were doing, how life was treating you and your family. I also thought about my sister. I am her eldest brother yet I have never meet her, having only seen her face in photographs or heard of her through the occasional card or phone call. I’ve never truly been a part of her life. And you know what getting married has taught me?

That family is the most important thing in your life and no matter what another does to you, be they kin, you must never stop loving them. You must never give up hope for them and for yourself. They will always be your family.

I have few regrets in my life. I’ve lived my life according to my own thoughts, rules, and ideals. Everyone does. But the thing I regret the most was never having you in my life as much as I should have. In all honesty, no one is to blame for this yet we are both at fault. It’s something that I pray we can change. I wish you had been at my wedding. I wish I had been around when my sister was born. I wish you could have seen me grow up, together as father and son.

Yet in our own little way, we never separated. We only grew older, wiser, stronger…together yet a world apart. But we never stopped loving each other. You as my father, me as your son, nothing can ever change this.

Father, I say these words to you now because I know they are the same ones that echo in your thoughts and your heart. I want to be a part of your life, my sister’s life…I want us to work towards becoming close again. It has been too long and as family, we need to do this. I want you to meet your daughter in law and know her face. We are both adults now and the wiser than before. The past is the past; let us work on the future.

I apologize if I seem overdramatic but you always knew I had a way with words and theatrics. I will speak plainly. I merely want us to try to get to know each other again and be a more intricate part of each other’s lives. Give me a call one day when you have time and let’s go out to lunch or just have coffee together. And talk…I think we are long overdue for that.

I hope we can do this, Dad. I know I want to.


Love,

Your Son