The Realization

I have 4 parents and yet most times, I feel parentless.

The Story of My Parents

The story of my parents began in the midst of two affairs that my mother and father had with each other; my
mother having an affair outside of her marriage with the man I grew up knowing as Daddy; and my biological
father having an affair outside of the marriage and family he’d built with his wife and three children.

My biological father continued to raise his growing family, including a sibling my same age, a few short minutes
away from where I was growing up, both of us with no knowledge of the other. My mother raised me and my
sister, assuming the role a “traditional” father might, as a disciplinarian and provider. Meanwhile my
grandmother nurtured and fed us as a “traditional” mother might. And the four of us formed my nuclear family
and the centerpiece of our extended family in many ways, as well.

So, I grew up with a mother as a father, a grandmother as a mother, an unacknowledged-adoptive father, and a
biological father, whom I knew nothing about and who had no idea I existed.

Losing My Parents in the Physical

In 2013, I lost Daddy. Knowing I didn’t belong to him, he chose to raise me alongside my sister and his struggle
with addiction. If he had one dollar to his name, my sister got a dime, I got a dime, and the rest went to support
his addiction. When he tried to stop cold-turkey, his body was overwhelmed. He went into a coma on his
birthday and died the next.

In 2016, I lost my grandmother, who died peacefully in her bed surrounded by her loved ones.

The loss of Daddy and Grandma was utter. One minute, Daddy was in his room in the back of the house
chilling, or catching a breeze on the porch, or passing me 20 dollars quietly, or telling a joke or staring listlessly,
eyes glazed in an alcohol-induced stupor. The next minute, he was no more. My grandmother’s loss was
natural and more gradual. As unprepared as I was, at least I had time to prepare.

Losing them in the physical realm was a type of loss for which I had some kind of framework. Losing parents
who are still living, and in my life, even, has been a more difficult loss to process.

Recognizing Parentlessness

I didn’t experience the loss of my biological father initially because I’d never known him. But once he came into
my life, I realized some measure of what I had been missing. He assured me that, though I was conceived at
the intersection of two affairs, I was conceived in love. And I found that to be reassuring.

And then, crushed under the disapproval of his wife of nearly 50 years, our relationship ended, just as quickly
as it had started. I get it, though. He had to choose his wife, if not for the vows he took then as atonement for
his affairs. And, if asked, I would encourage him to choose her, again and again. But the sting of the loss is not
lessened, righteous as the choice may be.

My mother is a more complex story of loss. Since my childhood, her struggle with addiction has intensified
steadily throughout the years. Likely stemming from some childhood trauma and exacerbated by the loss of the
most important people in her life, her pain increasingly became soaked in alcohol. She either does not see the
effects of her alcoholism or chooses not to acknowledge them. Either way, she is not able to be there for me in
the way that you might expect a mother to be.

The Experience of Parentlessness

I realize that I am grieving the loss of my parents.

At nearly 100 years old, my grandmother had lived a full life. And, though profoundly painful and
transformative, it was a loss that I had the capacity to metabolize.

For Daddy, picking up his addiction in his teens with no high school diploma and therefore extremely limited
acquisition of life skills, he was never really in any kind of situation to be a father to me. He, instead, gave to
me what he had in abundance: love. I continue to feel like I hit the lottery when I think about how he chose to
love me despite knowing I didn’t belong to him biologically.

For my biological father, he was robbed of the chance to be a father to me. My mother made a terminal choice
that neither he nor I would know who we were to each other. So, in effect, she seized any chance we had at
forging what could potentially become a thriving father-daughter relationship. And his choice–with or without
my mother’s irreversible decision–to engage in an activity that could possibly yield a child that he couldn’t really
father had the same effect. I lost him three times: once at birth, again to his wife and now to dementia. The
hope of us getting to know each other intimately, spiritually, on a cellular level is now all but forever dashed.

Now, I prepare myself to lose him a fourth and final time.

Living with My Mother’s Choices

My mother chose two men as fathers in my life, knowing that both were utterly unavailable and ill-equipped to
be fathers. There was no one to impose a real sense of accountability to any of my boyfriends. No one to
whom my future husband could, in good faith, go to to ask my hand in marriage (and not in keeping with some
sexist Victorian notions of womanhood but to make sure these guys knew someone was at home and there for
me, come hell or high water.) No one to explain things in life to me or comfort me or teach me to change a tire
or plant seeds of confidence in me that only a father can…or to do whatever it is that fathers do.

And as my mother continues to nurse her own addiction, I cannot turn to her for sage advice. I cannot seek
comfort from her when I encounter one of life’s innumerable perils. I cannot confide in her, resting confidently
that anything I share with her will not spill out to others just as the alcohol inevitably splashes from her glass. I
can’t leave my kids in her care. I know my mother is up against a beast of an opponent in alcoholism. Freedom
from that addiction is my greatest hope for her, and I am committed to doing whatever I can to help her slay
that beast. And yet, in the interim, it has left me parentless in many ways.

The Impact

In essence, I feel exposed. I feel susceptible and at risk. As I grow older, I am more aware of the absence of
my parents in my adult life. I feel like I don’t have a place, a safe haven on this planet that I could run to if my
back was against the wall. And I, in turn, feel the grief and sorrow that comes along with that absence, which
is complicated by the fact that my biological parents are still on this earth. And though they are alive, the
probability that I could establish with them a meaningful, parent-child relationship as an adult is low. The odds
are against us.

I feel like there is no home for me outside of my own making. And perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the point
is that having parents be present for you and available to you as an adult is a luxury, not a requisite. Perhaps
the point is that I should seek refuge in my Heavenly Father above all others and that He will decide where and
how my safe haven is built.

Read more by Stacey on Open to Hope: Evolving My Perspective on Grief – Open to Hope