A father reflects over missing his kids

Much of the innocuous past is something that disappears unless we retain record of it.

When I talk of the ‘innocuous past’ I talk of the healed past.  It’s important but it’s easily forgotten, not like the past that lingers in pain, the past you can’t get away from, and the past that many obscure through alcohol and other drugs and practices.

One part of my past that was incredibly painful at the time—a season that lasted at least three years, and probably closer to five or six years overall—was when I would live for days and up to a week without my daughters, when I couldn’t see them.

Early days in divorced life, as a single I mean, there were Tuesday and Thursday nights when I picked my daughters up from school, played with them at the park, then organised them dinner (usually ravioli!—I think they hate ravioli now), before they returned to their mother.  Then every second weekend, Friday afternoon from 5pm (or school) until 5pm Sunday.

Many an evening I would lament and weep as I drove off.  It was even worse during school holidays when my girls would be with me for a week or more and then I’d have to take them home.

I know their mother missed the girls dearly during absences too—when I had them.  My daughters’ mother and I cooperated out of a shared sense for what was good and right for our daughters.

Their absence in my life was one thing I never really got used to, though, because it’s the revisitation of loss each and every time.  Part of me would miss them terribly, and part of me would worry if I was concerned for their safety, but mostly I just missed them terribly.

Especially in the early days, particularly before I married again, I’d have whole nights where I was just low and blah.  All kinds of things would enter my mind, and I was ever thankful for the call to ministry that immersed me in the support I needed whilst I served God.

Not having my daughters around me for periods at a time left a great big hole in my experience of life, like I was bereft of a greater part of me.

I understand it’s not as simple as giving a parent his or her access all the time.  Marriages fail for reasons, and often it’s a toxic dynamic that needs to be broken.  But where there’s a missing, it’s hard, and often that missing can be a child for her or his parent.

It’s so very important for co-parenting to work for the benefit and betterment of the kids.  Vital in fact.  When two parents genuinely put the kids first, the kids can prosper despite the broken family.  But it takes humility in both parents.

All I can say here, however, is I used to miss my daughters like crazy!  But that missing always converted into plans for the next time we’d be together, so I could make it memorable or at least positive.