Loving the One you Hated...

imagine (or maybe you don't have to) growing up with no mother and an emotionally closed and hardened father. 
imagine knowing that your father was an alcoholic and drug addict.
imagine remembering all the times he that caused you pain: emotional, physical, spiritual.
imagine growing up embarrassed at your father, and who he was.
imagine hating your father
imagine knowing that you never wanted to be your father and have his life.
imagine growing up, realizing you're on the same road as him, and you hate him all the more for it.

and then, imagine that this one person who has been in your life from the beginning, has died.

this morning, i got a call from one of the kids we have taken in as a team, Sergey.
he found out this morning that his father died.
he was 55.
yesterday, he saw him for the last time. 

for months, and years, even, i have watched sergey struggle with his feelings of hatred for his father, and with his desire of a connection.
for months, i've watched him start walking the same road his father started a long time ago, convinced that it was in his blood to be a failure, an alcoholic, a drug addict, a nobody. 

today, this morning marks the first day i have heard him speak wistfully about his father, the first time his tough orphanage upbringing has betrayed him, to hear in his voice the little boy missing his father.
"my neighbors say my dad really loved me, that even when i was little, and i tried to run away to kyiv by myself (at about 4 years of age), he ran after me.  where ever i'd disappeared to, he'd go looking to find me."

i remember meeting sergey's father in june, after he graduated.  we went to visit him at his home, the place sergey remembers. 
drunk as he was, the father was extmemely proud of his son.
i remember sergey tried, and very awkwardly gave his father a hug. 
i don't think his father knew what to do with that.
i remember i shook his father's hand, and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
and i remember his father looking back at me, also with very proud eyes, before kissing my hand and muttering something i could not understand.

tomorrow we return to their home,
to make arrangements for the man that sergey hated his whole life, but loved as well.