Thoughts of his childhood without a father, the good times with our family, the risks he took in moving his young family from Maryland to Arizona. I imagined the disappointment and the hurt he must have felt with his relationship with Mom. The pain of having children who later didn’t respect him. Especially after all the years he’d been such a generous, humorous, and loving father. I felt the weight of the suffering he’d experienced. Where once he had enjoyed a good reputation and respect among his church friends, now all he faced was disdain or judgment because of his affair. They were gone. He had Carolyn but few friends.
Then one memory tucked away in the vault of my mind suddenly surfaced. It was right after I let him know how upset I was with him when he left Mom and us. He quickly, and somewhat cryptically, said, “You don’t know everything.”
What in the world had he meant by that? That was all he said. He didn’t add any more information. No more color or definition. He left me hanging. I didn’t want to ask for more because I had so little respect for him at the time. But I knew he was right. There are things between partners that only they know. That one statement only added to the mystery of Mom’s past, her possible own failings in their divorce, and secrets I was never made aware of.
All this time, I’d never addressed these kinds of questions. It never felt necessary. Anything unspoken seemed like it needed to stay that way. We were not equipped to artfully unearth the past. My mom, culturally Korean, wouldn’t want to bring it up because of our shame-based culture. And understanding Dad’s impoverished past, raised by a single mom and brothers, I knew he didn’t have the tools to talk about these types of hard things.
When confronting death, you see more clearly what is important and what is of less value. Marriage requires difficult conversations that most of us are ill equipped for, especially if you married young, like my parents did.
In every story, I spoke about my mom. She was always the protagonist. The hero.
Rarely in adulthood did I refer to my dad as a victim or as someone worthy of honor. Yet his approaching death unlocked something I didn’t know was in me. My anger and resentment were a way of protecting myself from the pain of losing him. He was the father that all the kids had wanted to have. When our family was together, I could see in my friends’ eyes that they wished they had a dad like mine. He was funny. Affectionate. Well read. A wordsmith. Lover of art and music. An entrepreneur who ran a successful business. Dad was physically fit and strong. Handsome and humble. He was extraordinary in the time he spent with us outdoors, camping, fishing, and then teaching us how to play baseball and football. For most of my life as a child, he was there for us. He was a part of that season in American history when the middle class grew larger, where many rose out of the generational poverty they experienced after World War II. He had sacrificed for us, like my mom did. He never defended himself or made excuses or blamed my mom for the failure of their marriage. The only thing he said was that last vague statement, that I didn’t “know everything” about Mom or their relationship. He never spoke badly about Mom. He never admitted what he must have known to be true.
I thought about all the sacrifices he’d made, not sharing his secrets or deep pain with us. At the time, I still wondered what Mom had done or said that might have been so hurtful to him. But given a lifetime of opportunity to defend himself and to shift the blame to Mom, he never did, and I respected my father for that.
As I sat there in that hospital room, night had come. The room was dimly lit so Dad could sleep. Dad suddenly woke up.
“Dave, can you help me turn over?”
“Sure, Dad.”
I stood up. He lifted his arm up to hold on to mine. Then he gripped on to my arm. He pulled himself up to reposition his body so he could face me, lying on his right side.
I sat down and we locked eyes. He then slowly closed his. Took a few more breaths. I heard one last exhale. And the stillness came.
The nurse had already turned down the volume of the heartbeat monitor so there wouldn’t be any noise. But I looked up and saw he had flatlined. Unsure, I stepped outside. I looked for a nurse. It seemed so anticlimactic. No one outside that room had any comprehension that my dad had just died. I saw a nurse at the nursing station.
“Uhhh, ma’am, I think my father just passed away.”
The nurse walked back with me to the room and examined him. Looked at all the monitors and started turning them off.
“Yes, your dad is no longer here. I’m sorry. We’ll call the funeral home. And we can take it from here. They’ll take care of him. You can stay longer if you want, but it’s okay for you to go home.”
Just like that, on February 13, 2007, my dad died. And with him went secrets I never will know.
But there was one thing I did know in that room where it was just me and him. We had worked through the hurt. We saw each other. We had forgiven each other. We had forgiven ourselves.
I kissed my father one last time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Same Same
You’re the man of the house now.”
My mom’s words echoed in my heart for a long time after my dad’s passing. I had refused to accept these words when she’d said them to me after their divorce. But when my dad died, I felt like I really was the “man of the house” now. Yet I still felt like a boy in many ways. And I certainly didn’t feel adequate. A lot of life isn’t about choice; you’re just thrust into it, responding to what you need to do.
For years, I struggled with owning my role as father. I’d feel that lack and disconnect constantly, all through my own children’s earliest years. Yet all the time, even daily, I would be reminded of how I was a father figure, not just to our children, but to many others I was serving. People would come up to me after I spoke or when they read something I wrote:
“You’re like a father to me.”
“You remind me of my dad.”
“I want to be a part of your family.”
“You are like the dad I never had.”
Even if they didn’t say it out loud, I could still see it in their eyes. They looked at me and saw someone who they thought could love them in a way their own father didn’t. That was consistently frightening for me.
When it came to my pastoral work, I was constantly placed in a fatherly role, whether I liked it or not. As early as when I was in my twenties in ministry, I could see people looking at me like I was their father.
Our Newsong church community’s demographic was really young, so I carried the weight of being a father for the many who I knew had difficult relationships with their dads. While it may seem like a compliment for someone to say that I’m like a father to them, I found myself conflicted. First of all, it was hard to see myself as a mature man. I still felt like a boy. Being seen as a father to so many made me feel old. And second of all, I didn’t want to disappoint them, their expectations. I had already experienced individuals projecting their dad issues onto me, and I had enough drama personally interacting with my own father while still trying to be a good father to my own children.
Hearing comments like this always made me feel uncomfortable. Outwardly, I’d smile, but inwardly, I’d say to myself, Man, I’m not your dad! I don’t want to be your dad. And I don’t think you want me to be your dad. I’m sure I’ll disappoint you.
When it came to my own four children, two seemingly contradictory truths were becoming clearer in my life. The first was that I felt like I was the luckiest man on the planet because I was the father of four beautiful, creative, and spiritual children. Their relationships with one another were intimate, fun, and secure. The second truth was that, even though I loved them, being their father unearthed a deep sense of inadequacy within me. There was this constant feeling that I would never be enough for them. It felt like there was some invisible force that was keeping me from engaging them more deeply. Hence, I brought many good uncle- and aunt-like people into my kids’ lives because, one, if I were to die prematurely, they would have these other parental figures to lean on, and two, I felt that if their maturity depended on me alone, it was going to be woefully inadequate. They would need a village to help raise them to be their best selves.
For years, I just kept going, ignoring my doubts and conflicted feelings about being a father. I really didn’t know where they were coming from. Until a young leader came into my life named Nick Roach.
In 2012, the chaplain for the Chicago Bears, a new friend, asked me if I would give a message to the team. Was he kidding? I love football. My dream in high school had been to be the first Korean American NFL professional football player. I jumped on a plane from Orange County to San Francisco. I had been invited to speak in the pre-game chapel service for the Chicago Bears. These chapels were held several hours before the game since most couldn’t attend their home places of worship because they had to work on weekends. While I didn’t fulfill my childhood dream of playing in the NFL, this was the next best thing. Empowering these young leaders to grow personally, relationally, and spiritually was right in my sweet spot even if it was just one talk.
As the large men and their coaches came filing into the room in their warm-ups, shorts, and T-shirts, I couldn’t believe I was in this situation. I was trying to hold back my excitement. I recognized several of the players who were All-Pros that you’d see eating someone’s lunch on the field.
The Bears chaplain was introduced and I shared some inspiring thoughts. Afterward, one by one, these behemoths of humanity came up to me and shook my hand. Some gave me a hug. I was laughing because, when they embraced me, I felt like a child being squeezed by a grizzly bear. My head would land around their stomach or chest area. Others came up to me and said, “Hey, man, don’t tell the coaches this, but pray for me. I have some injuries that need healing.” I discovered that players tend not to discuss chronic or even severe injuries because they fear they are more vulnerable to being taken out of play and being relegated to the bench. Many of these players would suffer concussions during practices or games, which could lead to more severe mental health challenges, brain atrophy, and death. Listening to them, I realized they are the modern gladiators sacrificing their bodies for the bloodthirsty crowd. America loves violence. The force of helmet-to-helmet hits is similar to the intensity of being in a collision with another car.
As the line was nearing the end, this young, gentle-looking guy came up to me. He didn’t look like a linebacker. He felt like someone who could just as easily have been an artist or a professor instead of a football player. He said, “I’m Nick Roach…” Suddenly his head went into my shoulder and he just started weeping. He was blubbering. Losing it. This was not what a starting middle linebacker does before his most important game of the season in front of a national audience! But I knew these were the type of tears that came from a deep place. He kept sobbing.
In this very vulnerable moment, Nick shed tears that had been bottled up inside him for years.
