the day i forgave my father

Today is my fathers birthday. He would have been 77years old. He passed away with cancer close to 2 years ago. In the last 8 or 9 years of his life we never spoke until the end. You see my father was an alcoholic and extremely abusive towards me and occasionally  my mother.That is until i was 14 and fought back, he never touched me from then on but also never spoke more than 6 or 7 words to me either. In retrospect i believe he just didn't like his life and drank and took it out on others.He was stuck in a marriage he did not want to be in and living somewhere he didn't want to be. Additionally there was something hidden, some sort of secret i guess about his growing up, his upbring. His family was never mentioned other than my mom telling me his father worked in coal mines and drank too much and i had a grandmother in Michigan, that was it.I don't know if he had brothers or anything.When my father got sick my mother kept telling me i should come see him but i was still holding on to a lot of anger. My therapist at the time gradually start to plant the seed that maybe it was time to move on and see him. She felt a lot of my depression was just anger and rage i turned inward. eventually i agreed to go to DC to see him, the first thing i remember was the shock of seeing him, the last time i saw him he was about 5'6'' and 200lbs and kinda bff, when i saw him in that bed he could not have weighed more than 100lbs. he smiled and looked at my kids, and asked how old were they,, he had never met my children. He then grabbed my by the hand and kinda squeezed it and said he loved me and there was so much to talk about, but was kinda tired. i told him not to worry about it. i stayed probably another hour for he was heavily medicated and kept falling asleep, we left had dinner and i came home and watched TV and went to bed. About 3AM the phone rang and it was my mother and she told me my father had just passed away, not 12 hours after i went to see him. My therapist at the time was somewhat spiritual and felt he waiting for that to die, me i am not sure but did come to realize i no longer hate him and don't speak ill when talking him.    ps but am still depressed so i don't know how much my father had on my depression but i am hanging in there, one day at a time