My Father Begged My Forgiveness Three Years After His Death

A visit to a healer gave me unexpected closure and more than I thought possible

Photo by THEFUNKSHIP on Unsplash

My GPS led me there, but all I could see were the giant eucalyptus trees lining the street on either side, as if they were competing in some best-in-show tree parade. It felt like I’d been teleported to this ‘Garden of Eden’ suburb, twenty minutes from Sydney’s CBD, like to some mystical Harry Potter destination.

Appropriate, I thought. I leaned forward over the steering wheel and looked up, half expecting a koala to fall onto the bonnet of my car to greet me. The winter sun twinkled through the leaves as shadows danced across my face. I wondered how it was possible to live in a city my entire life and not know streets like this existed.

I could be happy living on a street like this. I thought of my father then and wondered whether the suburbs had the power to change destinies. Could it be as simple as location? Or are our fates mapped out regardless of postcode? I imagine the latter is true, but one can dream.

All this space! Dad wouldn’t have argued with the neighbours over parking spots — one less worry for Mum. He could’ve planted an orchard in this lush soil — in his element. What a perfect buffer against the yelling and screams of my childhood, with houses so far apart. But maybe in a suburb like this, my father would’ve become a different man.

I was jolted from my daydream when a small tree branch fell onto the roof. “Shit.” I considered moving the car, but there was no escaping the trees.

Okay, lady, where’s this magic cottage of yours? If I’m being punked right now, I’ll be pissed.

A stream of smoke in my peripheral vision caught my eye. To the left, down from the street in a gully, stood the little white house as if it were straight out of a J.K. Rowling novel.

Oh, come on. You can’t be serious. Could this day get any more cliché?

As it turned out, there was nothing cliché about it.

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“Mum, you should call Pam. You need some healing. You need to be cleared of all the negative energy you’re carrying around. It’s no wonder you’re feeling out of sorts after everything you’ve been through with that crazy ex-wife of Ramzi’s (my husband). Pam helped me all those years ago, remember? She cut the ancestral bonds with my dumbarse excuse of a father. We’d been tied together for lifetimes, apparently. She’ll help you too. You’ll be amazed.”

Morgan, my daughter, couldn’t sugarcoat to save her life. She might have a point. I did notice the change in her since visiting that healer. Her father had cut her off from his life to appease his partner. I don’t know what siren song she’d sung to him, but it worked.

George, her father, had wiped his hands of her and his two grandchildren. He reversed his vasectomy at fifty and had a new daughter with the evil ‘stepmother’. I can’t imagine how that feels for Morgan, to be utterly replaced, disregarded, and erased from their history as if she never existed, but I can guess.

It would take a miracle to shake off that trauma, and it seemed she got her wish. Morgan reached a place of acceptance after her session with Pam. She no longer cried on birthdays or Father’s Day. The burden of hurt had been lifted in an almost tangible way. Something had shifted, and a sense of peace replaced the anguish that had once rested on her shoulders.

How I longed for peace like that.

Battle scares

March 2019 marked my long-awaited return to Sydney. I felt as though I’d been away at war for the past six years, living in Perth so my husband could be near his young children from two previous marriages. His second ex-wife made it her mission to conquer and destroy. She inflicted more damage than all my past traumas wrapped up in a neat package.

A vengeful, bitter woman hell-bent on payback for her failed marriage ultimately left me with no choice but to take action. A kind magistrate issued a five-year restraining order against her in 2018, granting me five years of peace. The mental anguish was another story.

My husband’s relationship with the sons they shared disintegrated as she alienated them from him over the next five years. The damage is irreparable. That story’s end hasn’t been written. Time will determine the outcomes.

Just weeks after my 55th birthday, we set up home again in the city we should never have left. I wondered if this was how war veterans felt when they returned home.

Loud noises made me jump. I constantly looked over my shoulder, even though I knew she was on the opposite side of the country. Nightmares plagued me as she came for me in my dreams. I had to psych myself up each morning to open my inbox for fear she had once again infiltrated my privacy with a barrage of lies and threats, not fully trusting that court order. Court orders had never stopped her before, despite the countless hours my husband had spent trying to see his children. Why would she do the right thing now?

Logic proved elusive as I battled to regain my sanity. We’d been back four months, yet I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being stalked.

If Morgan was right and Pam could help me, I’d dance around her cauldron and drink potions of blood and bone, if only I could feel like myself again.

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“Come. Come, out of the cold. Make yourself at home — first door on the right.”

She reminded me of Mum. I instantly felt at ease. She wasn’t wearing a cape or a witch’s hat, so that helped.

Pam was tiny, probably five feet tall. She could’ve been anywhere from seventy to one hundred years old. It was hard to tell, but I had a strong feeling she was not of this world. I know. Sounds dramatic, and given my state of mind, how would I know? I felt as intuitive as a sloth by that stage — a shadow of my former self.

The room was cosy and warm. A massage table in the centre occupied most of the space. She didn’t mention a massage. I doubted she’d have much strength behind her delicate, bird-like hands. But over the next hour and a half, I would feel the power of those hands.

She talked me through her process. I would lie on the table while she walked around it, her hands hovering inches above my body. Occasionally, she would place them on me as messages came to her.

“Your body holds your memories, and it tells me the stories.”

Wow. Brace yourself, Pam. If that’s the case, you’re about to be bombarded. I didn’t say that, of course. But I did what she asked.

“Open your mind. Be flexible and non-judgmental. If you can do that, we’ll be okay.”

This might have been my first healing session, but it wasn’t my first psychic rodeo. I was as open as could be. Bring on the healing, little old lady.

At least I didn’t have to strip. Fully dressed and feeling quite relaxed, I soaked in the warmth that seemed to emanate from her more than the little heater in the corner of the room.

And when she placed her hand on my left foot and uttered the name of my ex-mother-in-law, I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped my lips.

“You harbour resentment towards her. You feel abandoned by her. She didn’t just abandon you; she abandoned your daughter…”

What the hell. I hadn’t thought of that woman in years. But as Pam told the story, in every explicit detail, I realised she was right.

I hated George’s parents for their blatant disregard for what he’d done and how he’d left us destitute. They never reached out to see if we were okay or offered any kind of help. They just vanished like him, as if we never existed. Twenty-two years erased, as if we were nothing but a problem to be placed firmly in the past.

“Time to let that go, dear. Let’s do that.”

Whisper. Whisper. Whisper. Poof. Done and dusted — gone. This healing shit is brilliant.

Thirty minutes later, I was so gobsmacked I wasn’t sure I could take much more. Pam was only getting started.

The ghosts of Christmas past

My father died a few weeks before Christmas in 2016. I remember unwrapping his present on Christmas morning, the last gift I ever bought him. It was a thick coffee table book — hundreds of photos of the moon in all its glory, along with the history of NASA. I think Dad might’ve been an astronaut in a previous life. He was always fascinated by the cosmos. Not much else fascinated him.

“Now, I need to prepare you and say that you don’t have to forgive your father; it is your will to do as you please.”

What? Dad? Why would he be here, the last person I expected to show up? I wanted Mum. I wanted to hear her loving words, to know that she’s still with me. I wanted Mum to tell me I’d get through this, that my marriage would last, and I’d be happy again one day. That’s what I wanted.

“Your father is on his knees before you, bowing down, begging your forgiveness for every cruel thing he ever did, for not being the father you needed every day of your life. He sobs at your feet. He loves you; he always has. Hmmm… Will you forgive him?”

What. The. Fuck.

Without warning, tears filled my eyes. They rolled down my face in silence as a feeling of undeniable love engulfed me. I could feel my father through Pam’s hands that were firmly placed on my shoulders. She was right. He loved me so much. It was the closest I’d ever felt to him.

“So, will you?”

Yes. “Yes”, I repeated out loud.

“Good. Wise choice.” And the whispering was like a symphony of birdsong.

Pam continued as though the world hadn’t just shifted, as if she didn’t know I’d been waiting centuries for this apology from a father who’d been a tyrant for millennia. As if this moment in time was merely another moment of little relevance and not the monumental event it clearly was.

She knew all that, of course. She understood I would never feel the same about my father again. Now, when I think of him, it’s without the barbed wire around my heart. Compassion has replaced misunderstanding, or perhaps dislike. I can’t say hate, even though I spent years of my childhood hating him. I softened towards him as he aged, and the years mellowed the rage within him. It was a sort of love I felt then, I suppose. That was about as good as it could get with my father.

After that session, I could finally feel love for my father, the type I had longed for my entire life.

The finale — what a humdinger

“Before we finish, I’m going to offer you an opportunity. Now, I don’t do this for just anyone, but I think you can handle it. Would you like to talk to your spirit guide?”

Say what?

“Sure, sounds interesting.”

“Just don’t ask me anything when I come back because I won’t remember. It’s not me. They talk through me. Keep that in mind. Just listen and he’ll tell you what you need to hear.”

Umm. Sorry?

Visions of Oda May Brown from Ghost danced in my head. Shit was about to get real, like next-level woo-woo. Could I handle it? I was still thinking about it when I heard the faintest whoosh. I peeked through my closed eyes and saw Pam sitting next to me, head down, eyes closed, hands in her lap; she looked like she was napping, and then she spoke.

It was still her voice, or a version of it, but it clearly wasn’t her. My adrenaline spiked in a moment of fear, but then it dissipated as I was introduced to Joshua, my spirit guide, who had been with me for over three hundred years.

I wish I had the vocabulary to describe what happened over the next five minutes, but words seem inadequate for such a celestial experience. I’ve run out of room in this story; it’s already too long. But the feeling it left me with is easy to explain.

Every minute of every day, throughout every year of my life, Joshua has been my witness. He has protected me even when I felt utterly alone. He identified, in detail, the events that shattered my soul, in this life and others, and that’s when he held me tightest.

My life was being guided every step of the way. I was loved beyond comprehension. My return one day would be celebrated by the thousands of souls who waited for me. The love was unfathomable.

Like I said, there are no words in this vocabulary.

Last thoughts

If Pam spoke about the ex-wife and everything she’d done to me, I can’t remember the details. How bizarre, I’d think later; the very reason I went to her wasn’t the source of my healing. Yet, somehow, I felt healed from it. It was as if Pam had placed a shield around me, protecting me from the noise in my head. The anxiety and fear seemed to evaporate the moment I stepped out of her front door and into the cold, sunny winter day.

I sat in my car and cried, heaving uncontrollable sobs. It was relief, not sadness or anguish. It was astonishment at what had just happened. My whole body tingled as if it had been plunged into an electric socket. I knew without a doubt that Joshua had his arms around me.

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Thanks for reading, friends. Never think you’re alone. You never are. Someone is always holding your hand through the tough times.

This story was recently published on Medium.

© Marcia Abboud 2025 | All rights reserved

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