This is my 4th Father’s Day since my newborn son Samuel died in April 2012. And I am once again reminded that I have no living children. I am a father, but I don’t have my son with me to hold and love. So Father’s Day is one of the worst days of the year for me. The only day worse is his birthday, which is also the day I watched him take his last breath. What keeps me going is that I believe that I will see him again someday, but for now I just try to keep his memory alive by remembering the time I had with him, even though it was only a couple hours.
Samuel made me a father, and nothing can take that away from me.
I won’t have a happy Father’s Day, but I hope to at least have a peaceful Father’s Day. I pray that God will just give me the strength to get through the day. I don’t plan to leave the house. I don’t want to see kids with their fathers, so I will just spend time with my wife and work on some projects around the house to keep my mind occupied. And I will take plenty of time to be alone and remember Samuel and what it was like to hold him.
The only thing I really want on Father’s Day, aside from having my son back, is for people to acknowledge that I am a father. Because by doing so, they are acknowledging Samuel, and that is the best gift I can get. If you know a father without living children, I’m sure that is what they want also, so I ask that you would please just wish them a peaceful Father’s Day and let them know you are thinking of them. Many people will simply ignore these men on Father’s Day, as if they are not really dads. Some people don’t mean to be rude, but they just don’t know what to say, so they say nothing. Please don’t be that person.
If you are a father without any living children, I wish you a peaceful Father’s Day, because that may be the best that we can hope for.
I would like to thank Kelly Farley for his blog post about Father’s Day that gave me some inspiration to start writing this article. I also want to thank him for all the excellent work he does to help grieving fathers. You can read his blog at grievingdads.com. He is one of my favorite authors on the subject of grieving fathers, and his book is very good, and has helped me in some very difficult times over the past 3+ years.
He is married to RaeAnne Fredrickson, and they live in Oregon. He works as a Hydraulic Systems Engineer.
- My Father’s Day - June 21, 2015