opinion: ugh, it's father's day. again
is it time we reconsidered parents days?
5 minute read
every year on father's day, my family and i remember my dad with his favourite treat: vanilla ice cream cones dipped in chocolate. supplied
people used to say that i looked a little like my dad.
i didn’t mind it so much, after all, he was a pretty good-looking dude who took care of himself — my boyfriends always commented on his well-appointed six-pack.
he was smart and quiet and wonderfully non-confrontational.
i remember sitting in my classroom in the weeks leading up to every father’s day diligently working on something to show him how much i loved him — sometimes it was a card, or a painting. one year it was a crooked metal dust pan that i crafted in shop class. when he opened the awkwardly wrapped package — the paper ripped by the sharp edges i hadn’t bent properly — he smiled and said it was great, even though the handle fell off. he even used it for a while, refusing to acknowledge the dirt that would drift through the cracks.
when he developed symptoms of dementia, my family continued to celebrate him as a great father in june every year, but there was always an underlying feeling of sadness and loss as we watched him staring blankly as the rest of us chatted. we gave him cards and gifts like in years past, until they didn’t make sense anymore: his favourite scotch interacted with his medications, plus he couldn’t hold a glass, shirts needed special buttons so my mom could dress him easily and the yearly trip to the golf course — well, that disappeared too. my kids would draw lovely pictures for him, at which he would contemplate, unsmiling.
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when he died, i began to dread father’s day — the deluge of email, shouting at me to get a gift for my dad, “my hero,” or offering discounts for some father/daughter adventure would remind me of all i had lost. and when friends boasted about the fabulous family bbq or football toss in the park they had planned with their dad, it was hard to mention my trip to the cemetery without being a downer. even sharing the yearly tradition of a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone at dairy queen (my dad’s favourite) with my kids seemed sad and awkward.
as the years pass, the pain of losing him eases just a bit, making room for joy in the stories i tell my kids about the way he rescued baby birds that had fallen from their nests, how he liked to sing in the car on long road trips and the love affair he had with his blue 1969 buick that he named betsy.
this father’s day, i’m feeling those old pangs of emptiness and loss all over again. except this time, my heart is with my niece and nephew, who will be marking their first father’s day without their dad, my brother. at ages nine and twelve, and with a loss so fresh and raw, i can’t imagine what it’s like for them — to watch the global collective celebration of fathers when they no longer have theirs. thankfully, father’s day art and gift creation is not a thing at their school, and their mom has been doing an amazing job of keeping them distracted with trips to their grandparents’ house. but still.
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it’s easy then, to understand why there’s no shortage of stuff on the internet calling for the end of the continued observance of parents days, or at least a name change. some suggestions include guardian’s day or father figure and mother figure day. gratitude day is another one pitched by the writer of a petition on change.org aimed at celebrating all the people we’re grateful for — not just moms and dads.
many of the arguments that support abolishing parents days entirely focus on the fact they are “exclusionary,” and don’t acknowledge that some children have non-traditional families, or live in abusive situations in which finding good things to say about a parent may be difficult and awful. and what about those who want to be a parent and can’t, or those who have lost a child? others argue that just one day to recognize moms and dads takes away from the fact they deserve to be celebrated throughout the year.
“mother’s day is nonsense,” meredith atwood writes in psychology today, calling it an “unfair holiday to push upon the world,” a “forced celebration” that, for some, means essentially reliving a trauma every year. she quotes a psychotherapist friend who says it can be “triggering, guilt-ridden, fearful and confusing.”
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but should we get rid of days that recognize moms and dads?
i’m not sure. i do know that i wish there was, well, a little less of the surrounding hype and hoopla.
in may, online marketplace etsy sent an email offering to opt me out of the happy-happy-joy-joy father’s day marketing splashes. i didn’t check the box, but it was really nice to have the option.
so maybe instead of nixing mother’s and father’s days, we should instead focus on more empathy, kindness and awareness in may and june — less pomp about parents and more recognition of those around us for whom a day celebrating dads or moms might just be something they dread the whole year long.
the first christmas eve after my father died, a neighbour left a stunning bouquet of flowers at my door with a note: “thinking of you on your first christmas without your dad.” it didn’t fill the gaping emptiness that i felt, but it did help me feel a little less alone and strangely, that it was okay to be sad when everyone else (or so it seemed) were celebrating their families.
maybe that’s what we need — a father’s day reboot. how about we dispense with the superhero marketing madness, and instead, choose to do the day according to our own emotions and experiences. maybe that’s a round of golf, or a family porch visit. but maybe it isn’t. and if you fall into the “isn’t” camp, atwood suggests being gentle with yourself and staying away from social media as much as possible.
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for the rest of us, she says, “be gentle when you engage in the world … and be kind in your postings, your words, and your celebrations, remembering that this time is sometimes the absolute worst day of the year for some of your fellow humans.”
this story originally appeared in the healthing.ca weekender. to subscribe, click here.
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