The Sunday News
A FATHER is supposed to be someone you rely on to take care of you, love you unconditionally and take care of their family and in most cases be a hero definitely not someone who breaks your heart. Sometimes in life we have a plan of how things should be or how we desire our lives to be but too many a time our life plans don’t always work out the way we want them to.
The absence of a father in one’s life can be heartbreaking, more so when a father is locked away and unable to provide, protect and be with their family. One of the most heart-wrenching experiences is having your hero handcuffed right before your eyes and locked away for a long time.
Laws are rules that tell people how they should behave and when people break a law, they may be locked away for a very long time. When someone you love goes to jail, you might feel lost, scared, and even mad. When a parent goes to jail, for whatever reason, it is likely to be frightening and confusing for the children, by the way, not everyone who goes to jail is a ‘‘bad’’ person.
People do foolish, reckless things, or could simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Police can make mistakes sometimes.
This week our column is on a man who recalls the day his father was handcuffed and sent to jail.
The police came into my home and I stayed in the kitchen, after a long argument my dad was handcuffed and the neighbours were walking up and down the road outside our gate. I was too young and scared to understand what was happening. A lot of things were flooding my mind and I had a lot of questions yet no one had the answers I needed.
My mother and I watched in horror as my dad was taken by the police and I cannot remember much but a blank stare on my father’s face and for a minute my heart stopped beating. I remember though the first feeling I felt was embarrassment and I was thinking, who should I tell?
How would I go about telling anybody about what had happened especially our neighbours and other kids at school? Why would anybody believe me if I was to tell them my father was innocent? I could go on and on about the questions I had, I was unaware of the brutality of what happened to me, and unaware of what I should do.
I am not the type of person who worries about the people around me. However, that next day, setting foot in the same school like I had done a number of times before, I needed courage as I had my head down the whole time I was walking to school because my dad was the one who used to drop me off and pick me up from school every day. My mother had put her hand on my shoulder and said, “It will be all right. We should go on with our lives.”
We do not get to choose the family that we are born into, but I am thankful I was born here. You do not often see the trust and love that exists in a family, but when a large wave comes rolling and we work to protect each other, then these bonds become all too clear for my mother, sister and I for years. I was heartbroken.
The man I had adored for so long had abandoned me and my mother, I know it was selfish of me to look at it as him abandoning us but I had no better way of looking at things at the time and for the better part of my years. The man I trusted more than anyone had broken me and left us in the cold while he was locked away and there was no one to take care of us.
Months and years went on after my dad was locked away and I remember in the first few years when he was still with us we were the envy of the neighborhood as we had almost everything we needed. My mother was heavily pregnant at the time and she was unemployed. We managed to get by for a while but the needs were so much and the stigma for my family was so serious that I really did not even know what to do.
My mother was faced with losing income, struggling to keep our home, and a totally disrupted family life was among the greatest burdens I have ever seen my mother endure. Having my father sent away changed everything in my family. Today I wanted to share my pain of not having a father in my life because of one of the articles I read that hit me hard.
The older I get and more comfortable in my own skin, I have realised that there are still certain things that I must heal from in order to move forward.
I hated my father for a very long time and judged him for being locked away and I was angry at him and I always wanted to prove that I could be two times the man he was. I hated him for leaving my mother when she needed him most and for committing a crime. I knew little about life but now as a father I have realised that my father probably did what any man in his position could have done.
He had a family to feed and take care of and I now know that it was not his fault that he was locked away. As time went on and I got older, things changed. As I look back, I remember all the things he taught me like how to ride a bike, how to tie my shoes, and that I should always stay in school and to never let anyone push me around and to always stand up for yourself. Each time he drove me to school he had a lecture for me.
Most importantly, he taught me to not let anyone give me less than I deserve. Remembering all these things helped me heal as I chose to take the positive things he imparted in my life as I was on a road to being a father.
My heart breaks each time I think of the years he missed and how we could have turned out if my dad had spent all these years with us. Having my father locked away destroyed and killed my self-esteem and years on I am still a shy old man scared to hold a conversation because at the back of my mind I still think I am a son of a jailbird and no one can respect me or listen to what I have to say.
Getting through a breakup is as much a physical process as an emotional one. Remember that, and know that it will get easier.
Keep going. You will get there someday and in the mean time continue to share your heartbreaking stories with us.
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