We Were Special Together

For many years he was my everything. He knew me as nobody else could. He knew what made me laugh as well as cry. He knew what I drew confidence from as well as what made me shake in my shoes from fear. I thought I knew him, too, because that’s what good friends do: share with one another.

But I realized on one defining afternoon in the Fall of 1979, that I didn’t know him as well as I thought. It was the day he committed suicide.

Could I have been a better daughter?
What did I miss?

Action Changed My Life

For a season I spent hours and tears revisiting those questions and allowed them to influence my thinking. I focused on trying to understand the unfathomable. His choice haunted me. It wasn’t until I entered a 12-step meeting and started working on what made me … me, that I began to understand who we both were.

I came to understand I have a compulsive personality and began to understand my choices and why I made them. I even came to love and respect myself the way God wanted me to do all along.

I tell you all of this because while going through some of Dad’s pictures and prized possessions, I found a copy of The Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Did Dad know he dealt with compulsions, too? Did he try to distinguish what he could control from what he couldn’t? In my own quest for serenity, this is one answer I need to accept I will never know on this side of Heaven.

And I’m fine with that being okay.

Looking for a Do-Over?