“I idolised my dad. That perception changed in my teens when I saw the relationships my friends had with their fathers. I started to ask why we weren’t like that.”
Photo by Kyle Cleveland on Unsplash
Wren witnessed the breakdown of trust in her parents’ marriage in her late teens and they divorced soon after.
“He wasn’t around much so it took me quite a while to realise he was a high-functioning alcoholic. They weren’t very kind to each other. It took a certain amount of courage from my mum to say, ‘I’m worth more’.
“My dad was quite an angry person but always seemed functional to other people. That control; the tall tales he used to spin; that fake happiness: it was a form of self-preservation. On the inside, he was a lonely man and that transferred to me. I’ve often had very self-limiting beliefs that stem from childhood.”
The loneliness and lack of belief resulted in a short-term engagement when Wren fell hard for a man she calls a ‘loveable rogue’ at 16.
“He was emotionally charged with his fists but I still remember how he loved me with every ounce of his being. He was jealous and controlling and that would escalate into physicality and arguments.
“It was a blinkered year with him: that’s how love can get you.
“When I came out of the fog I realised the arguments were what I disliked about my mum and dad’s dysfunctional relationship and called time on it.”
All of Wren’s father’s family had died of alcohol-related deaths and so perhaps the dependency brewed over the generations.
“He’d make bad choices: he forgot my daughter’s name, he’d turn up drunk; I needed to step away for my own sanity and we hadn’t spoken in four years. But something compelled me to reach out that night.”
Wren had heard of her father’s terminal cancer diagnosis and felt she needed to make amends in the last year of his life.
“I rang him and we spent time talking about how we could rebuild our relationship – he hadn’t much time left. I remember saying, ‘I don’t want anything from you except peace’. I woke up the next morning and felt we’d made a little progress.
“I popped by his house the morning after; he was always an early riser but nobody answered my knocks. I knew something was wrong. Later that day I got a phone call and heard he’d passed away. His wife has advanced dementia and didn’t realise he’d died, she just thought he was asleep. By the time we got to him, he was in a bad state.”
It was a sparse, early-pandemic funeral.
“We were five people following behind a black car looking at the coffin with my dad in it. It was a surreal defining moment: cherish the people you love. It doesn’t matter how many bad choices they make, there’s always a way to make amends and support them.
“The grief I felt when he passed was much more acute because I didn’t have fond memories to go back to. I mourned what we didn’t have. I’d always be the kid sitting by the windowsill waiting for dad to come home.
“And you know sometimes you can feel alone even when people are there; things like the vacancy in his eyes or the emotionless responses to me when he’d been drinking. It screamed, ‘I’m not interested in you’.
“Things don’t come naturally to me so I have to go all-in to achieve something and any results feel justified. The absence of praise in my life has shaped how I bring up my kids and I celebrate their every achievement.”