My biological father died in January. Me using the term ‘biological’ should give you an indication of what our relationship was like — nonexistent. Our relationship, or lack thereof, made everything about his death an enigma at best. Sitting in waiting rooms and funeral homes felt all too familiar. Like I had done it plenty of times, the waiting, the hoping, the praying, wishing for a miracle that he would be better. I was wading in a sea of my family’s grief while I was completely fine.

But it was because I had done it before.

I waited every year on my birthday for him to show up. I waited for a phone call, a Christmas card, a smoke signal, and there was usually nothing. If there was, I knew it was engineered by my mother or aunt. I did the praying, prayed each time my mother said he violated his parole and had to go back to jail. Prayed every time I sat in the backseat of her car as we drove around the neighborhood asking the other crackhead where he might be. The miracles never came, and I understood that it was fine. Not every child has a father, and I was going to be no exception. I came to terms with never having a father. I was content with the love of my mother. I think it was then that I buried him. I gave him a funeral far before he had died. Letting go of him made it easier to be a child, to grow up and appreciate the mother I did have. I didn’t dwell on loss; instead I lived in spite of it. I did everything in spite of the parent who was never able to care for me because he cared for drugs more. I was the honor student golden child who used my education to distance myself from the crackhouse my father dug his grave in.

When he got sick, at first I refused to see him, but out of respect for my mother, I went to the hospital and sat in the waiting room. It never felt right to sit by the bedside of a man I never really knew, because I felt like I was watching a ghost die. Even at his funeral, I sat toward the back with family friends instead of being next to my aunts and uncles in the first pew. I watched as they all got up to speak. It was then that I learned my father’s middle name was Earl, that he was first arrested when he was a teen, and that he had many lives in his life, none of them involving me.

I told my boss, advisors and friends that he had passed and that I needed to go home. They embraced me with unwarranted hugs. I had friends reaching out to tell me they knew what I was going through, that they were there if I needed them. To be honest, I didn’t. I shed a tear because a man lost his life, but it felt like a tear of obligation and not one of true sorrow or heartbreak. I didn’t feel like I had lost a parent, because I had coped with that fact when I was 9 and he had just been released and didn’t recognize my face, or I was 11 and he stole the money I had received for my birthday, and when I was 15 he spent the day introducing us to his new girlfriend that smelled like the liquor store alleyways. I was fine.

Truly, I was. His death didn’t impact my day-to-day life, it was his final disappearing act in his life of magic tricks.

I was pushing forward and was about to finish my last semester of college – something this daughter of drug addicts never thought she could do. And that’s when it happened. My mother told me that she didn’t know how we were going to pay for the semester. She had spent most of the money going towards tuition on his funeral. That is when I cried and broke down, I stayed in bed for days, thinking everything I had worked for was being snatched from me. I hated that man even more than I did as a child. He had taken everything and now, even after his death, he was taking the one thing I had in spite of him, my education.

I told no one this except my advisor, because I wasn’t sure that anyone would understand. Most of the people around me were still waiting for the day when I would fall apart and say I missed my father so they could console me the way society told them they should. I couldn’t let them know that I was angry. I couldn’t share with the world that I hated the man that just lost his life because then I would be the monster. I was supposed to be grieving.

But how do you grieve someone who was never there in the first place, and how do you mourn the loss of a life that had almost taken everything you ever wanted?

The answer is that you don’t. You don’t curate your heart for the person sitting next to you. You don’t silence your rage because it isn’t acceptable. You are hurt, but you are just hurting in a way that others can’t sympathize with and that is okay. I yelled, I screamed, I wrote poems, I threw shit at the walls then wrote more poems. I let out the frustrations that had been building up my entire life. That was my grieving. That was how I got over my father’s death: I figured out how to graduate. I figured out how to smile. I figured out that I was enraged because I had to cry over something I never had and that my heart hurt because I never got to tell him everything I ever wanted. I moved on, even though my family was still distraught. My mother still tears up when she hears his name, but I am fine and that is okay.

Losing a parent is hard. Their death is final; but sometimes, you’re like me and you let them go long before they ever met the ground, and that, too is okay. You will process everything on your own time. There might be a day when you do shed a tear over their death and when that day comes, know it’s okay. You might never cry, you might never feel extreme pain, and that, too is okay. Losing anyone is hard, and you will cope how you see fit. For me, this is me grieving, this is me realizing the man who was supposed to love me but was unable to is gone. On Father’s Day, I went to church and lit a candle for him, prayed that he is at peace and then sent my mother my graduation photos and cried that he was in none of them, the same way we had never been in any photos together. Then, I wiped my tears and wrote this. I smiled knowing the wave of emotion had passed, but I know it won’t be the last time I’m visited by my memories of him (or lack thereof). In short, grief is a personal process, don’t let anyone dictate how you feel about the life you lost.

But it was because I had done it before.

Truly, I was. His death didn’t impact my day-to-day life, it was his final disappearing act in his life of magic tricks.

But how do you grieve someone who was never there in the first place, and how do you mourn the loss of a life that had almost taken everything you ever wanted?

For more personal essays like this, sign up for our daily newsletter.

Asia Bryant-Wilkerson

Writing since July 2016 · 1 story contributed