My dad's father passed away this summer. I had only seen him once, I can't even say that I met him because no one ever introduced him to me.  I got a glimpse though, and I guess that should have been good enough. My grandfather had 3 children with my grandmother. He drank himself into a stupor regularly, and when my dad was a teenager, he left. My dad didn't see him again until he was an adult.
He lived in Alabama, until hurricane Katrina destroyed his single wide, and he was forced to move back to NH, to the 3 kids he had abandoned a couple of decades before. My aunt was his main caregiver, even though he had been absent from her life for several decades. He was one lucky son of a bitch. I'm not sure I would have given him the same respect.
When he passed away, and my father called and told me, I felt sad for what could have been, and for what wasn't. I think my dad may have felt the same way. It wasn't devastating to him, like when he lost his mother back in 1995.  He made a joke about getting an extra week off of work, for bereavement. The silver lining.
My dad has not been a huge part of my life. He's unlike his father though, he didn't leave because he was a drinker, he left because he was 30 years old, with 4 kids (2 of which weren't his) and because he had met another woman. I often look back at those times.. when I was 7, and couldn't for the life of me figure out why my dad didn't want to be with us. I thought I must have done something. If only I had been a better kid.. If only I had behaved.. I understand now how these thoughts aren't rational, but to a 7 year old it was fact.
I think my dad must have felt the same way when he was a kid. Not understanding why his father loved his alcohol more than him.
I missed Father's Day this year. I usually send him a card, maybe give him a call, but this year, I did nothing. Not intentionally, I tortured myself daily about getting my shit together and at least mail him a card. But I failed. A month or so after fathers day, I was on my way to the store, and decided to stop in and see him, he only lives a few miles from my house. I was going there to ask him to borrow some money (summers are so hard with my husband not working- he teaches). Earlier in the spring we had to sink a significant amount of money into our cars, money we were saving for summer. I visited for a while, and just could  not do it. I couldn't ask him for anything, and felt like I was a kid again wishing he could understand what I was feeling, without having to tell him. As I was leaving, and feeling like a total failure for not being able to do what I had gone there to do, I started crying. I told him how sorry I was that I had missed father's day. This show of emotion made him clearly uncomfortable, and confused. He told me not to worry about it, and that he had missed a lot of things too.
I am over being mad at my father for not being there like he should have been. I know he did the best he could.. some people aren't meant to be parents, like his father.. He had no role model, no one to teach him how to be a parent. I know he has regrets.. and I bet if I had gotten up the nerve, he would have given me the shirt off his back. Or at least lent it to me!