It never made me rich, but it gave me a decent life. I married, had two children, paid our rent and enrolled them in good schools. We didn’t have everything we wanted, but I could sleep at night without wondering how we would eat the following morning.
Then COVID came. Customers disappeared, supplies became difficult to obtain and the little money I had saved went into keeping the business alive. I borrowed, cut expenses and kept assuring my wife that things would improve. Within a year, my account was almost empty.
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When our rent expired, I couldn’t pay. I sat with my wife and asked her to move with me to my father’s house. I promised it would be for one year. I would rebuild the business and find us somewhere of our own.
She agreed. We packed everything we had and moved into the bedroom where I had slept as a child.
My mother had died years earlier. My father lived in the house and rented out some rooms to tenants. He could have helped me financially, but he never let me forget that I had dropped out of school.
Whenever he saw me sitting in the compound, he reminded me that educated people had secure jobs. To him, the collapse of my business wasn’t a consequence of a pandemic. It was proof that I had wasted my life.
I swallowed his comments because my wife and children needed a roof. Our children changed schools. They missed their old friends and struggled to understand why they now shared one small room with us. My wife tried to make the place comfortable. She arranged our things carefully, leaving a narrow path between the bed and the bags.
There were days I needed money for food or school expenses. When I asked my father for a loan, he refused. Sometimes I asked my wife to speak to him instead. He treated her more politely and occasionally gave her money. I felt ashamed that I had to send my wife to ask for help I couldn’t obtain myself.
One afternoon, I returned home and found her crying. She had been crying for so long that her eyes were swollen. She wanted us to leave immediately and go to her parents’ place.
Her parents were renting too. They had little space, and I couldn’t imagine moving our children into another crowded home. I begged her to endure a little longer. She wouldn’t explain why she was so distressed, and I mistook her silence for exhaustion.
A few months later, she packed her clothes and the children’s things. She said she was leaving, whether I followed or not.
I was angry. I was spending my days looking for work, calling old customers and trying to find money for another start. I thought the person who knew my struggles best was abandoning me in the middle of them.
“You’re leaving me when I have nothing?” I asked.
She retorted, “Do you want your father to get me pregnant before you know it’s too late?”
I thought I had heard her wrongly.
Then she told me what had been happening. My father had repeatedly approached her in ways no father-in-law should. He had made unwanted advances, touched her and used the moments when I was away to corner her. The money he sometimes gave her had become another reason for him to behave as if she owed him something.
The day I found her crying was the worst. He had tried to force himself on her, and she believed he might have succeeded if a tenant hadn’t walked in unexpectedly.
She was afraid to tell me. We were dependent on him for shelter, and she knew how quickly he could throw us out.
I went straight to my father’s room. The door was locked. He refused to open it. He said, “You’re a fool to believe your wife. What does she have that would make me do that?”
I shouted, “Come out and speak to me like a man. Come out.”
He didn’t. Instead, he ordered me to leave his property. Soon afterwards, he sent some young men from the area to push me out of the house. I didn’t fight them. My wife and children had already suffered enough. We took what we could carry and left.
I asked my wife to stay with her parents while I found a place. I spent some time with my elder brother, then moved between friends who were kind enough to offer me a bed.
It took four years to rebuild. I started small, found customers again and slowly regained some stability. My wife and I lived apart for a period, but we never stopped being a family. I apologised for not understanding her distress sooner.
I never spoke to my father again. A few weeks ago, my elder brother called to tell me dad had died. I asked my brother, “What do you want me to do?” He asked, “Shouldn’t his death bring an end to the fight you have with him?”
“He wasn’t my father when he was alive,” I told him. “Death can’t make him one now.”
I asked the family not to put my name on the obituary. They did anyway. They expect me to attend the funeral and stand beside the coffin as though all that happened between us was a disagreement that time could soften.
My brother thinks I’m being unreasonable. I answered, “He should have tried it on your wife while you were down. Maybe you would have understood my pain.”
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Even my wife has encouraged me to attend. She says he was the only father I had. I know she means well. She doesn’t want me to carry regret into old age. But I cannot stand before people and perform grief I haven’t made sense of.
I’ve cried twice since the news came. I cried for the father I needed when my business failed, and for the apology that will never come. I cried because he died without acknowledging what he did to my wife, and because I will never know whether remorse ever reached him.
I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive him. I know only that his funeral will not undo what happened in that room. I have a wife who stayed with me through poverty and danger, and children who now have a safe home. They are here. He is gone.
I will continue caring for the family I nearly lost. I won’t attend the funeral to prove that I’m a good son. I wish my father peace. The rest of this pain is mine to carry, and I’m learning how to carry it without passing it on to my children.
—Anderson
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Wow! This is heavy……… Try and forgive him so the burden leaves you. I wish you well. May God heal you.
I will do same if I were in your shoes. Forgive him but take your time and decide whether or not you can attend the funeral