Stories About My Father

Happy Father’s Day weekend, my friends.

I know for many of us, holidays like Father’s Day can be rough. Some of us are missing fathers who have passed. Some of us are unable to be with our fathers to celebrate because of distance or circumstance. Others have fraught relationships with our fathers that don’t neatly fit within the bounds of a Hallmark card.

I fall firmly in that latter camp.

My father was (is?) a mercurial man — prone to verbal outbursts, emotionally unavailable, misogynistic and conservative. A bully. I’ve maintained a consistent but distantly relationship with him my whole adult life, which persists even now that he’s 80-years-old and lives in memory care due to his advancing dementia.

Every time I return to Florida to visit him though, I get the gift of a new realization. Dementia has peeled back the layers on his angry persona and revealed the scared little boy who always lived underneath. He’s sweeter, vulnerable, anxious now. It’s easier to feel empathy for him.

Getting to know my dad anew as he reveals himself in his twilight years has been a strange gift, and one I’ve written about at length.

This Father’s Day, I get to call him and tell him I’m coming to visit him again later this month. He will be elated for a few minutes, until he forgets I told him. And then he’ll be elated again and again. It does feel good to give him those moments of joy, even as they are fleeting and our relationship, fractured.

I’m hoping to return with a new story to share.

For now, I’m sharing my past ones here, to commemorate Father’s Day weekend. If you have a complex relationship with your father, or a loved one with dementia, know that I see you.

I hope these stories bring comfort to you this holiday weekend…

My Dad, Dementia, and the Things We Don’t Forget

In the end, all we want is to be remembered

I Flew 3,000 Miles for My Dad’s 80th Birthday. He Can’t Remember I Was There.

So why did I go?

My Genderfluid Tween Tried to Explain Their Identity to My Dad

It went really well, though not in the way you might expect.

A Visit with My Dad and Celine Dion at the Memory Care

How dementia has brought my Dad and I near — even as we are still far

Happy Father’s Day to My Dad, Who Has No Idea What Day It Is

My father is much more likeable now that he has dementia.

For Daughters Who Can Never Find a Father’s Day Card That Fits…

Hallmark doesn’t quite make rhyming couplets for my challenging relationship with my dad.

Wishing a Happy Father’s Day to My Stepfather, the Felon

We all contain multitudes. His just included actual prison time.

Greetings!

I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of three publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns, Three Imaginary Girls, and genXy. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

If this story resonated with you, why not buy me a coffee?
(Make mine an iced oat milk decaf mocha, please and thank you.)