A WhatsApp Message From My Father After Many Years of No Contact

Well, whaddaya know?!

I had written this blog post (you really should check it out!) — I hadn’t even published it yet, and then…

I get a WhatsApp message from my father!

“Diana, how are you doing?”

Isn’t that strange?
Years and years of hearing nothing.
And now, out of nowhere!

My first thought was: maybe something serious has happened. After all, he’s old.
I considered replying:

“Is something serious going on? Is there something you need help with? If not, please leave me alone, because for my own sake I would rather not have contact.”

But it seemed wiser not to respond impulsively.

Fortunately, my daughter, who lives in New York, was staying with me in Amsterdam at the time. She had gone out for the day, and I decided to wait until she got home so I could talk it through with her.

“I hope with all my heart that you don’t respond to that message”, she said.

I’m happy to take that advice from her.
There have been situations in the past where she advised me not to engage with something. I did anyway — and later regretted it.

I did tell her what my thoughts had been. And I also wondered whether my father himself might have carefully considered whether or not to send me this message.

“No”, my daughter replied. “Just look at the time he sent it: Sunday evening at seven o’clock”.

According to her, he was simply bored.

“I think this is the kind of message someone sends when they need a little stimulation. Like: who can I get a reaction from?”

That thought — that this might have been his intention — would never have occurred to me on my own.

Because my father matters to me.
Because I reason from my own perspective.
And because I would never send a message to someone who matters to me with the intention of simply getting a little adrenaline rush — just provoking a reaction.

But I found the thought interesting, if only as a thought experiment.
It is actually a very simple thought, but one I could never have arrived at from within my own frame of reference.

And now that this thought was placed in front of me — acknowledging that I have no idea to what extent it is actually true — a lot of puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place.

My father’s behavior, which I had never been able to understand, which I had agonized over, which had kept me awake countless nights, which I had suffered under for so long and so deeply…
could suddenly be explained in one fell swoop.

I just don’t mean anything to him.

That thought is something I apparently couldn’t see before. Couldn’t understand. Couldn’t allow myself to accept.
And yet it is so obvious.

It doesn’t even hurt.
Not now.

On the contrary: I thank God that I am finally able to face this.

Again, I don't know how much truth there is to this idea. But it would explain a great deal—in fact, it would explain everything.

When I was the one who cut off contact fourteen years ago, I even thought I was doing him a favor: finally, he had a legitimate reason to be rid of me.
After all, I was the one who ended the relationship — and well… there was nothing he could do about that, of course.

It has not escaped me, though, that he has made very few attempts to restore contact.
He has done some things, but they have been extremely minimal.

And this message stands out to me for the same reason.

I would never approach my daughter after all those years of no contact in such an impersonal way, through such a fleeting medium.
I would write a thoughtful letter.
One I would spend a long time and a great deal of care thinking through.

The letter I would write I wouldn’t just write my daughter’s name. I would precede it with something like “My dear,” “Dearest,” or even “My dearest” — something that would make it unmistakably clear that I love her.
And in the letter itself, I think I would explain how much she means to me. I think I would refer to the good memories I have of her, and I would tell her what I appreciate about her. I would tell her how much I miss her, how painful that absence has been, and how deeply I would hope that we might find our way back into each other’s lives. And above all, I would write that I would truly want to understand what is hurting her so deeply, what has caused her so much pain that she no longer wants contact. And that I would take that seriously.

That is what I would do.

I have considered the possibility that he means well, but simply doesn’t know how to express himself differently.
After all, this was the kind of explanation his girlfriend would give me whenever I expressed my hurt about the way he treated me.

But no.

No…

After all these years of no contact, was this really all you could come up with — this casual little text?

Photo: Zachary Kadolph