I wish that people could have a "Scrooge" experience and see their ghosts of Christmas Future. I wonder how they would change?

I have a bracelet with 7 beads on it, each a different color and each representing my female relatives who had a big positive impact on my life in different ways. I cherish their memories and every day I say a prayer of gratitude for their roles in my life.

OTOH, when everyone is posting pictures on social media of their fathers on Father's Day with glowing tributes, I have nothing at all to say about my father--and I have always been the one to be kind to his memory. People tell me he was funny. I know he was very creative and philosophical. He was basically a good human being. But he was a crappy father, and on my bracelet, the color of my mother's stone is red, for her courage in leaving him in the early 60s when no one got divorced and, she thereby saved the family.

Two of my brothers have nothing good to say about him, with good reason. He was terrible to them. My youngest brother has more benign feelings towards him, as do I. If I were my father and if there is a heaven and hell, I would be in hell right now, looking at the wasted opportunity to share a loving life with my own children, and having to stare down the consequences of my own selfishness and refusal to change.