Me and my father have historically had a bad relationship. He wasn’t a good person and he has never really owned up to his mistakes and the things he’s done to me and my siblings, so when I moved out I decided no contact was best and it went on like that for a few years.
A couple years ago, my mother passed away. I wasn’t terribly close to her, but no one could afford to handle her funeral rites except for me so out of a sense of duty, I went back home to handle everything. She was the reason I decided to have a sit down meeting with my father.
We talked alot. The main takeaway was that I told him for my mothers sake, I will “wipe the slate clean”. I would let the past go, and only judge his actions from this point on. He seemed to accept this.
During our conversations, he mentioned how his biggest fear was my siblings and I turning completely away from G-D, and although I’m not terribly religious, I do observe some mitzvot. I wear yarmulke, I keep Shabbos, I practice the holidays and attend a Reform shul. He mentioned how proud he was that I became a better man than he was and how I didn’t let the past affect that aspect of myself.
The service went well, I handled everything, and since then, although I still have negative feelings toward my father, he’s getting older and I have started calling him a few times a week. I’ve let alot go, and I have accepted what I can’t change.
Our relationship started to build up a bit, starting off from my observance as a talking point. Since then he’s also been working on his observance of the mitzvot. He’s started to get better, not much but a little bit.
I owe alot of this to my goal of being a better Jew and leaving the world and the people around me better than they were before.
Tl;dr: me and my father found common ground in my judaism as a start to better a broken relationship
submitted by /u/YarmulkeLewinsky
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Source: Reditt
