On Being a Fatherless Daughter

I never really had a father but I still miss him.

Last Sunday was Father’s Day. For many of us whose fathers are no longer alive, that day stirs up a range of emotions. It can heighten or intensify grief; it can amplify the loss of one of the most central figures in our lives. But for me, a person who always had a fractured relationship with my father, it has always presented a different kind of challenge: Do I have the right to feel the loss of my father on a day that celebrates all the good about dads when I never really experienced that to begin with?

Over the years, I’ve had several friends say to me about their fathers, “My dad is my person.” Each time I have heard that sentiment, I would wonder what it would be like to have that kind of relationship with a father? Other times, I would see their tribute posts on social media—adorned with loving pictures and heartwarming messages—and immediately feel a pang of loss. What those moments opened up was not a catalog of memories I could relate them to but a deepening of the void inside me that I knew would never be filled.

When my father died almost two decades ago, I thought grief didn’t belong to me. I believed I had no right to claim it because my relationship with him was different from the ones most people I knew had with their fathers. Every time that sting of loss found me, I pushed it away secure in the knowledge that others deserved to feel it more because their grief was based around love.

What I have come to understand is not that grief never existed but that mine began many years before the day my father physically died and some ways will always be a part of our story.

My parents divorced when I was two. By elementary school, I discovered that along with being a charming and charismatic storyteller, my father was also an abusive alcoholic. For a good part of my adolescence, I lived in fear — fear about what had already happened and fear about what might happen next. Visits with him always had the potential to be traumatic and caused more division between us than any sense of connection.

This led to years of estrangement and a few unsuccessful reconciliations until he died shortly after my husband and I welcomed our now 21-year-old twins into the world. Just after his death, as a young mother meeting new friends, when the conversation veered to the topic of proud grandparents and I explained that my father had recently died, I brushed away any sympathy that was offered. “No it’s fine, we weren’t close,” I would quickly say. Why did I deserve to mourn him when we had barely spoken in the 10 years leading to his death?

I often shifted the focus to my mother. I felt the need to point out that even though one parent had failed me, I was fortunate to have another who had stepped up two-fold. I viewed her as the only parent I really needed. Seeing it that way gave me the illusion of control — if I didn’t allow him to hold a space in my life, perhaps I would be able to ignore his absence.

And yet grief found me no matter how hard I pushed it away. It found me at places like the post office when I saw a man who looked like my father and imagined the package he held was being sent to his daughter. It found me seeing the look of unconditional love my own husband had so many times when he looked at our children over the years and I realized I had never seen my father gaze upon me in the same way. It found me in the months after my father died when I finally had to face the fact that now, there was never a chance we would reconcile. And yes, it found me every June when social media was blanketed with loving Father’s Day posts while my feed stayed empty.

Grief, whether it’s based on what was or what will never be, is still a void. It can be a place that once flourished and now runs dry or it can be an abandoned one that never had the chance to grow. Grief comes in many shapes. It ebbs and flows and finds us in the moments we least expect but it belongs to all of us in all its different forms.

Today, I allow myself to feel it when it hits me. I acknowledge my loss for what it is—the grief of a daughter who had an estranged relationship with a parent is not about missing what was but letting go of what will never be.

Darcey Gohring is a freelance writer and editor. She is a writing instructor, specializing in memoir and personal essay. To learn more, visit darceygohring.com.