Sometimes a father is absent.
There are two ways this happens.
The first is when the father leaves the house to live somewhere else.
A pediatrician who devoted his life to children with disabilities once told me that when a disabled child is born, the parents' relationship inevitably shifts. If the bond was already strong, it can deepen. But when it isn't, it fractures—often irreparably—and the father walks away.
Some argue that mothers bear part of the blame. Overwhelmed by grief and consumed by the child's needs, they stop making time for their husbands the way they did before. Perhaps. But I believe the father withdraws because he cannot accept the family's new rhythm, and he chooses escape over the hard reality. The truth is simpler: a father does not always accept a child born... this way. For a mother, it may be easier. The instinct to protect her child from the start, hour after hour, creates a bond so fierce it survives anything. That small child with so many problems, so many needs—he requires you almost constantly. He cries and you don't know why. Or he stays strangely silent and you don't know why. He moves too much and you don't know why. Or he lies still and you don't know why. Why... why... why...? But he is your son. He is there. And you love him. You cannot help but love him.
The other way a father is absent is when he stays in the house but acts as though he isn't there—as though his child's struggles have nothing to do with him.
I remember, years ago now, a Sunday morning when I wanted to take a shower mid-morning. We mothers of children with disabilities know exactly what I mean: in those early years, small luxuries like reading a newspaper page, writing a letter, or even washing—these belong to the night hours or dawn, when the children sleep. But that Sunday morning my daughter was on the living room carpet, content, surrounded by toys, and I asked her father, who sat nearby reading the paper, to keep her company for ten minutes.
When I came out of the bathroom, I found my daughter sitting on the floor in front of the door—she had crawled there—motionless and silent, alone, her eyes sad. Like a beggar left outside and ignored. Her father had noticed nothing. Even now, all these years later, though my daughter's condition has improved beyond comparison to those days—even now I still prefer to shower at night or at dawn. I have known both kinds of absence: first a father in the house, then a father gone. Neither is easy. But in my view, total absence is preferable. The situation is clear, transparent, and without false hope, you can organize yourself on realistic terms. Certainly it is not simple to be both mother and father. What is lost most is the chance to talk things through, to advise each other, to discuss. You must decide everything alone. The responsibility is enormous. The fear, too. It is hard.
But if you don't lose heart, if you don't give up, if you clench your teeth and hold on, then you can move forward. And that child—who continues to be a source of love and remains, more than ever, a reason to live—that child becomes also a reason for deep joy.
- E.C., 1987