The Healing Journey

June 14, 2025

Tom learned a lot about fatherhood from his college students, many of whom came from single-parent homes. At the beginning of the semester, they had to write a speech on the topic “If you could take anyone to dinner, living or dead, who would it be?”

There are the usual choices, including Taylor Swift, Lionel Messi and Beyonce; however, a few always want to invite an estranged father, a father they never met, a father who left, and of course, a father who died … because their hearts are longing to know the man who should have stayed with them and loved them, however deficiently, but went away or was taken away.

Despite what influencers, experts, and naysayers might think, fathers are important. They’re not always perfect and they usually have defects, but even though society tries to minimize their importance, young people still instinctively feel the need to be loved by the fathers they never met or lost. They miss them deeply.

And their stories often reminded him of his own father, who often made life miserable for the rest of them, but after he died, Tom came to the irrefutable conclusion: “He wasn’t the best, but he was better than the rest,” and he told him so when he visited his grave on Father’s Day.
©J Pisani

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