Forgiveness Begins Where Silence Ends

Forgiveness Begins Where Silence Ends

By [Abdul Hadi]

When I was young, my father wasn’t a man of many words.

He was a presence more than a personality—always there, always working, always tired. He fixed broken fence posts, not feelings. He raised me with rules, not warmth.

I grew up learning that silence was his version of love. And for years, I accepted it. Until it started to feel more like distance than devotion.

He never told me he was proud of me.

Not when I got into college.

Not when I stood on the field after my final game.

Not even when I got married.

He attended everything, sure. But always just on the edge.

There, but unreachable.

Present, but never close.

I used to think something was wrong with me.

Why didn’t he ask about my dreams?

Why did I feel like I had to earn his attention—but could never quite get it?

As I grew older, I realized he wasn’t withholding because I wasn’t worthy.

He was withholding because he didn’t know how to give.

The silence between us grew louder over the years.

When Mom passed, we didn’t talk about it.

We cleaned out her room in the same house we grew up in without a single conversation about grief.

Just bags, boxes, and unspoken pain.

I asked him once if he was okay.

He said, “Does it matter?”

That was his answer for most things. And that one sentence became a wall between us.

Years passed.

We spoke only on holidays. Short phone calls. “How’s work?” “You eating enough?”

That kind of love—the kind with no texture.

I started therapy after my son was born.

I didn’t want to repeat what was done to me—not out of cruelty, but out of tradition.

My therapist asked me, “Have you forgiven him?”

I laughed at the time.

Forgiveness? For what? He didn’t hit me. He didn’t leave.

But that was the trap.

He stayed—but never showed up emotionally.

He was there—but I still felt alone.

Last fall, he got sick.

Something about the lungs. I didn’t ask for the details; he wouldn’t have told me anyway.

So I flew home.

I found him in that same chair, the one he always sat in after dinner. He looked smaller. Not just older—but reduced.

And I realized: he had always been this way. It wasn’t age that made him frail. It was the armor finally cracking.

We sat outside one evening. The air was crisp. Autumn clung to the last bit of warmth.

I cleared my throat.

“You know… I used to think I wasn’t enough for you.”

He looked at me like I’d said something in a foreign language. Then back down at his hands.

He said nothing.

So I continued. “I used to try so hard. Grades, sports, whatever. Just hoping you’d say something. Anything.”

Still silence.

Then, softly:

“I didn’t know how.”

I turned to look at him. He wasn’t crying. Neither was I. But we both looked like we had.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve spent years unlearning that kind of love.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re better at it than I was.”

And that was the closest thing to an apology I ever got.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a movie moment. But it was real.

Raw. Human.

I think sometimes we wait for perfect words before we let go of pain.

But forgiveness doesn’t need poetry.

It just needs a crack.

A moment.

A choice to stop holding your breath and start speaking.

Now, I talk to my son every day. Not just about school or snacks—but about how he feels.

When he’s afraid, I don’t tell him to toughen up.

When he cries, I hold him.

And when I say “I love you,” I mean it loudly.

Because the cycle doesn’t break by blaming the past.

It breaks by refusing to repeat it.

Forgiveness didn’t begin with him.

It began with me—the day I stopped waiting for him to speak, and started saying what I needed to say.

That’s where healing lives.

Where silence ends.