For the majority of Americans, Father’s Day is a holiday which is looked upon lovingly. It’s a chance for fathers, grandfathers, mentors, godfathers, and the like to be honored for the role they’ve played in people’s lives. Starting sometime towards the beginning of June, commercials, radio stations, news stations encourage us to share stories about, spend time with, and buy things for our dads. People spend their weekends in the backyard barbecuing, in Yosemite camping, at a favorite diner, or other various family activities which bring about feelings of familiarity and love.

For other families, the holiday brings about feelings of anger, guilt, hurt, betrayal, pain, I could go on. I come from one of those families. Generally, I avoid the television, radio, any sort of media communications during June, and this month was no different, but Father’s Day came with a stronger vengeance than usual. Saturday, my grandfather died. The next day, I received a letter from my estranged father’s fiance saying*, “I wanted to tell you I am sorry for your loss. This news is an unwelcome reminder that tomorrow is not promised. Your dad is alive, but you have made him dead to you...Don't let this be the third consecutive year you haven't wished your dad a Happy Father's Day. If you do love him, as I've heard you claim, please let him know today. You may not think so now, but you will regret it later if you choose not to honor your dad today with some form of contact.” Thus, Father’s Day is hard for two reasons.

First, the man that I most respect for his work ethic, educational morals, and love, is dead. While conversations with him were filled with long pauses and awkward conversational skills, he and I had an understanding. Every couple of weeks, I would get a letter in the mail signed Gran Pa--He never was great at spelling. My mother recounted his mantra “If you can’t spell, learn how to use a dictionary” almost every time I asked her to spell a word. He was fully integrated into a curriculum vitae, not that it mattered much, except to instill fond memories. In the words of my brother, who inherited the gift of spelling from him, “We just throw letters onto a page and hope they’re right.” I fall somewhere in between the two philosophies.

Inside each letter was a small note which generally read “I thought you’d like this” and either a newspaper clipping, a magazine article, or book recommendations that he thought I’d enjoy. His accuracy astounded me; he never sent anything that didn’t pique my research interests. In fact, I packed several of the clippings and hung them on my wall at Oxford for inspiration and to remind me that I always had someone in my academic corner. He was my most consistent correspondence in college, and I already miss his letters. I miss wishing him Happy Father’s Day, too. He was at the top of my list to call. That was the hardest to-do box I’d ever checked off, knowing I’d never get to make such a call. Now, or ever.

Second, Fiance reminded me with direct unsympathy in light of my grief that I have chosen, and still continue to choose, an estranged relationship with my father. The choice, one that I made a just over a year ago, and only after months of deliberation, has never been easy for me. I’ve always wondered if I’d regret staying healthy because it meant I needed to keep distance until my father sorted his life out. Most days, I don’t, but some days, like Father’s Day, I wonder. There’s something distinctly ironic about being a Daddy’s girl who hasn’t wished her father “Happy Father’s Day” in three years. It’s a fact I normally spend this holiday ignoring or forgetting. Fiance made this impossible. She placed that struggle in the forefront of my mind.

So I sit in two tragedies. One, an inevitable loss of someone I cared about, and two, a loss of someone I might not have had to lose, if I had sacrificed my sanity. The first is entirely unavoidable. I am not a Fate. I do not cut strings on a whim, and this is an impossible pill to swallow. I keep blinking, as if it’s a dream. Then I pinch myself, it’s not a dream. The second, I realize is a platform. Not everyone has a blissful Father’s Day, and if I have learned anything through this haunting weekend, it’s this: do not let the fear of pain paralyze you from doing the right thing.

Fiance played on my fear of regret and the immediate feeling of loss I felt after Gran Pa’s repose to try and get me to reconsider circumstances she disapproved of. Her manipulative tactics, whether or not intentional, help illustrate a truth. A year ago, I would have bent over backwards to try to accommodate her wishes, regardless of my personal safety. Now, I have boundaries and red-flag filters that help me detect harmful situations.

Cutting my father out of my life was arguably the hardest decision I’ve had to make, but it was also the healthiest. If your Father’s Day has been filled with struggle and regret and loss such as mine, this is a friendly reminder to stick with it. Things get insanely dark before the dawn, and one day, you’ll see the progress, just as I did.

*email has been edited for brevity; however, the words are directly from the source.

**Names are omitted to protect the privacy of the individuals.**