At the mortuary where we were viewing my cousin’s body, I was surprised to see my bio-dad showing up in the back of an uncle’s car. I hadn’t seen him in two or three years, but I recognized him right away, strangely, looking happy to see me. It annoyed me that he immediately went in for a hug but I was also just puzzled he was there. The first thing out of my mouth was not hello but, “I’m surprised you bothered to show up.” He quickly responded, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

A hundred reasons quickly ran through my head as I assessed my priors. I had known he would be back in the States around this time, so it wasn’t out of the question that he could show up. Growing up, he hadn’t brought me to every family function, but now as an adult myself I have skipped a dinner here or a party there, but knew the seriousness of this event and only thought I might skip because I couldn’t get out of bed. Still, his relationship with his siblings had gotten strained lately, specifically he and his brother had started drifting away from my aunts. Plus, I had hoped he would not be there, because I did not feel like I had the emotional capacity to see him.

However, it didn’t go as poorly as I imagined, likely because my expectations of him are so low. We politely greeted each other, exchanged a couple sentences summarizing our lives, and did not sit together for the vigil. At the cemetery itself, he stood nearby, as much to talk to me as to my cousins. During the final ceremony, reflecting on my family’s loss, I began to cry. At some point, I was again surprised to hear sniffling and quiet sobbing coming from his direction. Beyond that surprise to hear signs of emotion coming from him, I didn’t feel anything and walked away. The timing is a bit hazy, but I think they had already lowered my cousin’s body into his grave and were letting us drop white flowers down. I dropped mine off, waited until I could hug my aunt, and then cried a bit more holding her. I deeply needed that hug, needed to feel warmth and affection.

As has happened many times growing up, in listening to my aunt talk about her son, I saw the evidence of  absence of a strong emotional connection between myself and either of my parents. My aunt loved her son deeply and seemingly, unconditionally. As she spoke about him yesterday during the vigil, she demonstrated a profound love, a patience with her son, and perhaps most tellingly, she reported that she had nothing to regret, nothing but good memories with him. I joked with her a bit that she couldn’t say the same of one of her older sons, one of the cousins I’m closer to, as I knew they clashed. I felt a tinge of remorse saying that, as I knew similarly my parents couldn’t say the same. She admitted it was true they had bad memories, but that she loved all her sons in their own ways. 

My uncle loved him deeply too and was devastated. Yesterday after they closed his casket, my uncle leaned over it and sobbed, his shoulders heaving with the weight of his sorrow. His sisters and wife consoled him. My father had already left, one of the only two immediate family members to have taken off. I can’t picture him caring so much about me to display such strong emotion. This isn’t because I feel unloved, rather that he himself has told me that he had no desire to be a father and had only been interested in reconnecting when I was younger because he was lonely and didn’t have many friends. Thus, it is difficult to imagine him being so broken to have his son taken away suddenly, given his voluntary absence for large periods of my life.

When I was younger, I often only found myself realizing what I was missing by observing other families. Before I started school, I don’t remember ever wondering where my father was and didn’t realize I didn’t have any male role models in my life, as I couldn’t truly miss what I didn’t know existed. In kindergarten, around Father’s Day, we were asked to make cards that we could save and give to our dads, as we would soon go on summer break but, the teacher explained, they still deserved something special for that day. I remember raising my hand to ask, “What if we don’t have a dad?” I assume she had been prepared for this because she asked, “What about an uncle or older brother?” I didn’t have that either and after some back and forth she got me to admit I sort of had a step-dad. I made the card and when he picked me up from school later that day, I threw it in the back of his car as I didn’t want to talk to him, scared I’d say something wrong or that he wouldn’t take my card. I don’t know who found the card, someone must have when the van was cleaned, though neither he nor my mom ever brought it up. For my part, I focused instead on summer break and forgot the card until years later when I was thinking about my early childhood. If I had had the clairvoyance necessary to know he’d still be around these 20-plus years later, or the diplomatic skills to see the value in giving him the card as a request that he step up to bat and act as a father figure, I would have given him the card. It’s not that I regret not giving it to him, it’s just that, given that he bothered to stick around, I now wish he had been more of a father to me, instead of ignoring me or picking on me so much.

I remember years later, when a family friend of my parents began to have his own sons, I realized just how much I wanted to have someone like a dad that loved me. I watched this man push his son on a toddler swing he had installed indoors, the same style that he used to push me in, and then later he picked him up and tossed him in the air, all the while laughing. I hadn’t felt such a sharp pang before and started to panic from the strong emotions swelling up in me. I was scared that someone might see my cry, but I felt a strong longing that I had never felt before, having never seen before signs of such strong paternal affection. After all, although my stepdad was still in our lives and by this point had fathered my two youngest sisters, he wasn’t exactly affectionate with them either and at nine or ten years old, I still didn’t have a grasp on what a father really could be. If anything, the closest person to a father figure at that time was this family friend and his wife had just given birth to my replacement. Seeing how he treated his own flesh and blood made me realize that I didn’t have that, presented itself as evidence of the absence of paternal affection, and the sudden lack had me in tears. 

Although that was the pain I felt then, the truth is that I had also missed out on my mother’s affection during those early developmental stages. Looking back into my early childhood, I remembered the loneliness of my mother always having to work, how I would cry into her legs when she was leaving for work and would hide in her closet so I could smell her clothes while she was gone. As a young adult it dawned on me that the reason my mom couldn’t stay was because neither my dad nor her next baby daddy had bothered to stick around and help her support their children. Knowing my mom as I do, I know she told them she didn’t need their money and was proud she could work long hours to provide for us. Knowing my father as I do now, I know he would have taken that opportunity to keep his money, even though it was badly needed; I imagine it was the same for her other baby daddy. Still, it wasn’t until I started having friends that told me that their moms stayed home from work that I realized what I was missing out on, evidence of the absence of a mother’s (or father’s) love in those early years. I want to stress; I do not blame my mom for having to work and not being able to be round during my formative years. I do blame my dad though for allowing himself to live a very comfortable lifestyle while my mom worked long hours to scrape by.

In short, it wasn’t until I met parents who supported and loved their children that I realized my parents did not. Well, not exactly, as for example, I had already been kicked out of the home when I came out. Most damning, I learned from straight friends that their Mexican parents had told them that if they were gay it would be ok, as all they cared about was their happiness. In learning this I came to realize just how conditional my parents’ love was and how much it was not dependent on their nationality or geographical origins. That is, even my friends with parents from Hicksville, Mexico, had been told they were loved, gay or straight. Meanwhile, both of my parents have at times abandoned me and it was in seeing how supported my peers were by their parents that I truly came to appreciate how much I lacked. So it goes and will continue to show itself.  

I truly believe that if I had not gone on to be successful, as defined by our capitalist society, that neither parent would talk to me. I can’t prove this now, but the signs point to their conditional love and support. Had I ever stumbled, had I needed them to accept me as a broken person needing help to rebuild, I fear they would not have bothered. It is immensely reassuring that this theory will never see itself tested, that on this I can only speculate and never truly gather evidence to support it.