I Have Not Seen My Son Since Christmas Day 2008 – by Pat Lyons
Merry Christmas Everybody.
Christmas can be a sad time for many, recounting the loss of a loved one during the year or at this time of the season.
For many fathers the sadness may be another equally difficult situation where you cannot see your child because you are being obstructed by the other parent, be it that its your recently born child or the grown child you have not seen for many years.
For me that’s been the case since Christmas Day 2008. Christmas can be the peak of the pain of the separation experience built up throughout the year. I fought very hard to see my son when he was born in 1997 and it took two years before I managed to be a dad in his life. For the next ten years we had some great times together, many holidays and cherished memories normal parents take for granted and thankfully those happy ten years helped me deal with what was to come around again after Christmas Day 2008.
My son had Christmas Eve with me in 2008 and went home, I’d even had a nice card and present of CD’s from his mum. Everything looked fine until the next week. I went to pick him up, and suddenly I found the door was not answered and nobody was home when it was my time to be a parent again. My world fell apart again.
With all the Parental Alienation stories the common goal of the controlling parent is to make sure you know how insignificant you are to your own childs life. You will feel the hate and its likely to last a lifetime unless checked by a Family Court, which for some reason is nearly never done.
Of course my son is smothered in love and in my case the mother has done a remarkably good job of bringing him up, aside from her self-need to remove his dad and consequently half the childs family.
I know there will be dads today, on Christmas Day, wondering should they buy presents and see them chucked away by the mum. All the time this category of dads are hoping for a bit of light a bit of hope and in my experience that hope is only present in Fathers 4 Justice, its not there in the courts and legal channels and its not there in the policy of the country.
If I can advise on how I coped then I am probably luckier than most. My dad survived the Second World War in a Japanese Concentration Camp and a hell-ship voyage where out of 6,752 prisoners who were marched and shipped to another prison camp he was one of the near 1,600 survivors, the rest dead. Its my dad I can look up to and gain the strength to deal with this pain that never stops, just becomes easier if you can distract from it.
I’m also lucky because I can look at videos and photos of ten happy years of being dad when my son was aged between 2 and twelve.
I can also be thankful my son is alive as I have shared the period seeing the suffering of a family close to me who lost their child in a road traffic accident. For them there was a finality, for me at least I have some hope of seeing my sone again.
I’m very grateful some of my sons school friends update me and I know he is a strong resilient lad dealing very well with the problems and his education results are simply fantastic. Kids generally cope in this arena, they wont realise until their are adults what is happening and most genuinely think their mum is protecting them and being reasonable.
A choice I made at the outset nearly 17 years ago is not to line the solicitors pockets as there is huge truth in the fact that few do what you can easily do yourself and even if you do nothing then its not much different to most of the Family Law factory. I would advise any dad who hopes to get through this pain each day as the Christmas Day notches up another timespan to try and concentrate on seeing you don’t physically break down with the pain.
There is no easy way and negotiating with a difficult mum merely serves to her delight putting you through pain.
So the road is long and its painful and if you want to try and not break mentally with the years ahead then be a bit good to yourself, you’ve done nothing wrong and so stay strong.
Look up to the way Matt and some of those at F4J bring hope to what is a human tragedy.
Merry Christmas, be strong and together one day we might see a law that allows the next generation of children to have a presumed right to be a parent.
Take care Fathers
Pat Lyons, Dad to Ashley
