Forgiveness

It was my father that made me listen to Bob, the bipolar 67 year-old close talker. I intended to sit at the bar alone, and have a divine breakfast of Belgian waffles with warm syrup and fresh strawberries that I ordered from my barstool. But just as I reached for my hot chocolate, he came from behind me and said, “I’m going out for a cigarette.” It was as if we had come to the coffee shop together, as if I knew that the cane and the books and on the counter next to me, belonged to him. The man to the right of me said, “You just met Bob.”

My eyes were half-closed when I heard Bob’s voice again. I was taking in the sweetness of the strawberries and whipped cream. “Having a big breakfast, huh? I just had mine. It looks good. Nothing like fresh strawberries.” And with every sentence, the grayness of his beard came closer to my cheek, teasing me, threatening to let me feel its roughness. I chose not to ignore him. Instead I turned and looked at him, “You are right. Strawberries are the best.” And from that point on, we stumbled through Bob’s autobiography, weaving through decades of mistakes and choices.

We ended with the relationship with his daughter and his granddaughters. And the guilt he associated with everything he’d done in his life. “I have been addicted to drugs and alcohol. I ran with prostitutes. I have done a lot of things that I am ashamed of. It just seemed like my friends went right and I went left and I had no idea how to get back to the right.” He mentioned his like and dislike for the Catholic Church. "I went to my priest and said, Father, I no longer want to be associated with the Catholic Church because of all of the guilt I have.” Again we laughed. And then I spoke. “Bob, you can’t change what you have done. It’s in the past. You can either release it and move on or allow it to eat you up for the rest of your life. Either way, you can’t change the past so you have to take the steps to forgive yourself.” And he looked at me, with his eyes squinted, and asked, “But how do I let go of all of the guilt I have? How do I move on?” And that’s when I realized that Bob represented all of the fathers I had never spoken with. The ones who were ashamed of their past and sometimes their present. The ones who never said ‘I love you’ to their children. The ones who wanted to do better but didn’t know where to start. I looked at Bob and in one moment, secretly forgave my father for everything he ever did in his life….for the things I knew about and the things I would never know. I then forgave Bob for his daughter.

That conversation bridged a gap in my relationship with my own father. Six months later, I saw Bob again. Not at that coffee shop, but in my own father’s eyes. Forgiveness was a little easier the second time around.

How have you struggled with forgiveness in your own life?