Image by Mar Dais from Pixabay

My daughter “celebrated” this past Father’s Day in the same manner as she has done for the last 10 years: alone.

My son “celebrated” nine years in this same exact manner. I suppose the saving grace this year was he no longer had to experience the void, pain, anguish and feeling like everyone, but him, was blessed and he did something wrong to deserve the outcome.

Some fathers are just incapable of fulfilling their role as fathers in the same way some mothers are incapable of fulfilling their role as mothers.

I don’t want to minimize Father’s Day. Like Mother’s Day, it is a wonderful holiday to sell cards and gifts and it brings out the best in families, but I think those who also need to be acknowledged and recognized are the children and young adults who are robbed of a father * too early in life either through death or abandonment. They are the silent victims who have no seat on the sidelines, because the game is over.

It was a particularly difficult day for my twenty-something year-old daughter, who, as resilient as she is, this year she also had to deal with the lose of her only brother, her only sibling. It seems everyone was celebrating Father’s Day or had a crisis of his or her own to give her a shout out. Fortunately, this woman, who doesn’t deserve any of her fate, dealt with the holiday as she does every year, with maturity and acceptance.

Amazingly, this year on Father’s Day she received a very special gift and faith renewal from her brother. She was cleaning out some paperwork and an envelope dropped out. Inside was a $20 gift card from her brother that he gave her six years ago.

It was as if he were telling her, “Go ahead. Go celebrate Father’s Day. I have faith you can do it for both of us.”

Sometimes when you declutter your life and remove the stuff, you make room for abundance.

* This goes for Mother’s too.

NOTE: Our beloved senior cat is on the mend!

Faith Muscle