The letter I wrote my dad

It's Father's Day morning. The kids are all still asleep, the sun's been up a while, and I'm sitting here with a cup of coffee and a little journal I just started using.

I'm only two mornings into it. I put off buying the thing for the longest time because it looked almost too simple to matter, just a few prompts and five minutes. Turns out simple and powerful aren't opposites. I'm already feeling it.

So this morning I sat down to be grateful, and the gratitude kind of took over.

I've been a dad for 19 years now.

I wanted it long before it happened. When I was a boy, I dreamed about this. Playing catch with a son. Dancing with my girls and being silly with them. Having a family that felt full. And here I am on a quiet Sunday morning, everyone still asleep, and my heart wants to explode for what I've been given.

It hasn't all been easy. There have been a lot of hard days, and a lot of nights where I questioned whether I'm any good at this. One of the hardest lessons has been learning that my hopes and my desires are mine, not theirs. For a long time some part of me believed I could shape my kids into the people I pictured them becoming. That's not my job. They're each their own person, with their own dreams, and watching who they actually are turn out to be more wonderful than who I imagined has been its own kind of grace. There's been some mourning in that too. But mostly gratitude.

And thinking about all of it brings me back to my own dad. Arthur Louis Koral (affectionally known as Art).

My dad is the guy who taught me to throw a baseball. He probably threw one back to me 10,000 times when I was little. He took me fishing more than I wanted to go, because fishing was his love, not mine. I was impatient and honestly not very good at it. He took me to flea markets hunting for antiques and opened up a whole world I'd never seen. We even went three wheeling, which was about as dangerous as it sounds and eventually got banned altogether.

I still remember crashing one of those three wheelers with him and rolling down a big hill. The way he told the story, he stuck his foot out as it came down toward me and shoved it away before it could roll over me. He saved my life on that hill.

There were a lot of great memories. And then there were the scary ones.

Somewhere around third, fourth, fifth grade, the arguing at home got louder. My dad's temper got shorter. I understand now that a lot of it traced back to drugs and alcohol, and it came out in ways that were both verbal and physical. For me and my siblings, it was just regular life. We didn't know there was another way to live until we started noticing how some of our friends lived.

When my parents told us they were getting divorced, it was sad. It was also, honestly, a relief.

We ended up living with Dad. He worked midnights and a lot of overtime, so most of the time we were on our own, figuring it out. That became normal. The thing I quietly ached for was the opposite of all of it. Stability. Peace. People who could disagree and work it out instead of blowing up. I never saw that growing up, but somewhere deep down I always wanted it.

I spent most of my teenage years despising my dad and blaming him for the mess our family was in. Years of carrying that.

Then something started to shift when I got to college.

My heart was getting softer. I was becoming more empathetic, partly because of the people I'd ended up around, some on purpose and some by chance. I started believing in God, and started believing that he believed in me. That he loved me and wanted me to love other people. So I asked him to change my heart toward my dad. And slowly, surely, he did.

Eventually I really loved my dad again.

Andrea and I got married in January of 2003. Two months later, my dad called to tell me he had cancer, and that the doctors had given him 6 to 12 months. It was crushing. Especially because the relationship was finally being repaired, and now there was a clock on it. So we tried to squeeze in whatever we could.

One night I took him to a Red Wings game. A friend had handed me tickets so I could take my dad out.

On the drive home we were talking the way we usually did. Sports. The weather. The easy stuff. And somewhere on that drive I had this moment where I realized I didn't want it to stay at the surface. Not with the time we had left.

So I told him. Hesitantly, because my dad spent over 30 years at Chrysler as a millwright, the guy who fixed the heavy machinery when it broke down, a blue-collar guy through and through, and I had no idea how he'd take it. I said I wanted us to have real conversations. About the things that actually matter.

To my surprise, he said he wanted that too.

For the next few weeks we got it. Deeper conversations. Praying together, which we'd never really done. Crying together. And laughing, always laughing. We didn't always know how to pray together, but we always found a way to laugh.

It's been over 20 years since he passed.

A few Father's Days ago, I sat down and wrote him a letter in my journal. I just thanked him. For what he gave me, even with everything he didn't have to give. Because here's what I've come to understand. He did the best he could with what he had. My picture of what a father should be looks really different from his, but he never got the picture I got. He didn't have the examples I stumbled into through friends and other people who showed me another way.

So I forgave him. Even though he was already gone. I let go of the bitterness and the anger and the resentment I'd carried for years, and I just said thank you.

It was one of the most freeing moments of my life.

So this morning, on Father's Day, I'm right back in that place. Thankful. Blessed beyond what I deserve. And thinking about all the dads out there, wherever you are, whatever shape your story is in.

It's never too late.

Grateful for you,
Ryan

P.S. The journal I mentioned at the top is The Five Minute Journal. Two days in and I already wish I'd started years ago instead of assuming something that simple couldn't do much. If you want to try it, here's my link. Turns out five quiet minutes in the morning can do a lot more than I gave it credit for.

P.P.S. If there's a conversation you've been putting off with your dad, or your kid, or anyone you love, this is your nudge. You don't always get the drive home from the hockey game. If you can have it now, have it now.