Our father died a year ago today, which was the original subject of this blog post. At this time--especially at this time, with the political and economic mayhem currently taking place in our country and possibly the most important Presidential election in United States history about to unfold--I wish Dad were still alive, but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't. When big things happen: Emily goes through something tough (any of the things I will be broadly and blandly vague about because I know she doesn't want me writing about them on my blog), another member of our very close, very small family struggles with alcohol and drug abuse, I'm unemployed for a month and horribly depressed by it, I have a seizure because of an accidental overdose of a supposedly safe medication, I meet and move in with the love of my life, we learn to live on a dollar-eighty-seven or so a week because we're so badly in the hole and in such poor shape to do anything about it, my major love before now gets married, I turn 27 years old, my sister turns 24, and somewhere in the middle of that we miss a birthday: Dad would have been 68 this year, and the stress of missing him on that day buckles my knees at work and leaves me clutching the counter in front of me, eyes and mouth filling all at once. There's a sense of drowning that accompanies profound grief, and I wonder how many people have experienced that, have written or talked or expressed it aloud, the intense fury of an internal storm so big that for a moment it threatens the life and safety of the whole ship, and just when you begin to pull apart at the seams, it calms. The winds die down, you stop feeling like your guts are trying to escape their worldly anchors and you move on, limping, sometimes, slightly. You can breathe and see again, though sometimes through a glimmer of tears, and you know that you're going to survive, even though it seemed like--only a moment ago--the hole in your life was going to cave in and swallow you forever. The absence of a parent, of a father. Like I'm qualified to write about this. Well, I am absent a father, so I guess that qualifies me. For a year now. It actually happened on a Sunday; it was Sunday, October 7, 2007, and I had been waiting for the phone call all weekend. They'd told me on Thursday or Friday that his systems were shutting down, and that his liver was failing completely. That was when it really hit me: my dad is going to die, it's going to happen soon, and there's nothing I can do about it. I am thousands of miles away from my family while this is happening and so I can't even be there with him. He told me the whole time he was going to beat it, and so, like everything else he ever told me, I couldn't believe it when it wasn't absolutely, undeniably true. When I was a kid, my dad always told me how much he loved me, how beautiful I was. I wasn't much for combing my hair or keeping clothes pretty--I was a tomboy from the start, and Emily too, and he loved that--so I wasn't really much for mirrors, either, and until I was a gape-toothed, stringy-limbed preadolescent, I'd never really looked in one. When I did, I was horrified. I remember thoroughly feeling that I was intensely, terribly ugly, with my gapped teeth and enormous glasses and upturned piglike nose, my chapped lips and my lack of chest, or nubs, or anything that would positively identify me as woman. I was so, so ugly, and infuriated with my father: how dare he lie to me like that! He told me my whole life how I was so beautiful, and I wasn't, not at all, not even a little!!! I wa sso angry about it I never brought it up with him. And I feel like I lost a huge chunk of my innocence that day.
Of course, I grew up...and now, at 27, can feel beautiful, even when I am feeling fat and ugly and wretched and even when other people are telling me how wretched I look or am acting, and I can be quite wretched, and I know this, and I've moved beyond the mirror that haunted me through puberty and stalked me well into teenhood, and I can handle the fact that while I'd like to lose 20 pounds to be in better shape as a runner, I am still in damned good shape as a 5'7", 155-lb. woman. I can see more of what my father really meant when I was growing up and less of what I saw in that terrible mirror, but I still feel the zing of that betrayal, the shock of that realization. It was the same way I felt on October 4, 5, and 6 of last year: numbed, but true, I was coming to terms with the fact that my father was dying. And so when my brother called me to give me the news, when I first heard his cracking voice through the receiver of my phone, saying, "Don?" and me "Yeah?" and he "He's gone." and heard the pitched sob he held back from crying out into the phone to me, maybe because he was holding his baby son, maybe because he didn't want to break down and was trying to hold it together for me, maybe because he was already flush with tears and had seen his world tear apart already as he watched our father take his last breaths, he held it back, and the world came undone anyway. The most important thing my dad ever told me: I'm going to beat this, was no longer true, and while I tried very hard to see the beauty inside of it: he wasn't sick anymore, he wasn't hurting anymore, he wasn't in pain anymore, he was in a better place, he was going to heaven or to meet God or to an afterlife that would be such a great improvement over this one, while I try to see that beauty to this day, I still feel shocked, betrayed, undone, that he left us. He left us, dammit! How dare he! And I stomp my selfish, egotistical foot and think of everything he's missed in my life since: meeting the love of my life, dealing with the shakiest employment year I've ever had, standing up to my cruel and deceitful boss at my former employer and winning, having a seizure, getting fatter than I've ever been, realizing how much Jeremy really loves me, and is willing to put up with, for me, my 27th birthday, my introduction to and love for the world of aerial arts, training for my third marathon, the 2008 election and the possibility of real hope and change, and the very real possibility of the horror of four MORE years of Republican hell, or even, I daresay, eight. Hockey season starting, autumn in Carolina and Colorado, telling him how much I miss him on the phone, talking politics in heated discussions that last for hours and leave both of us with grumbly tummies as our dinners have gone cold but full of mindful inspiration and joy, that we could come together and talk and agree and disagree and love each other so much over something so important. And so unimportant. Next to something like the former love of my life, the only man I loved enough to bring home to South Carolina to meet my entire family, all the siblings and my father, the importance of that, and of letting him go entirely, of finding out that my old love, who had long since had found his true love, was getting married, got married, sent me wedding photos. He missed that! He missed Bob's wedding. How dare he! How dare he!
And then I think of the things he's going to miss: my wedding, my children, if I ever have any, the same for Emily, the rest of the years of my life, and I start to feel very young and upset and confused. And selfish. And I cry and yell and scream even though it doesn't do any good, and even though I know it's never going to do any good. The print publication of my first writing. The actual upcoming election, and his vote, that won't be counted in it. The chance to meet, get to know, affirm the love of my life, admire him, enjoy his company, welcome him into our family. The pictures from Bob's wedding. My third marathon. My workdays at the medical center, and Emily's at her medical center, and hundreds and hundreds of New Jersey Devils games to come. And I break.
I should have taken today off: if I had any kind of option to do so, I would have. I'm a teary disaster, and a teary disaster who needs a shower and fresh clothes and a few minutes to think and maybe read my email and the news before heading off to work for the day, and since I'm running out of time--and for the sake of my loyal readers, who may or may not have doggedly followed me through this one--I'll end this here and go do that. It's 6:55 in the morning in Colorado, and the sun is coming up. Dad died in the middled of the afternoon, so he was still alive a year ago now. I wonder what he was thinking, or feeling, or seeing. I wonder--selfishly--if he knew how much I love him, and how much I would miss him. I wonder if he was sad, or upset, or in pain, and I hope he wasn't, because no matter how great the struggle, how mighty the storm, how ferocious the waters that swirl around us become, the sun keeps coming up, the days keep passing and, amazing though it seems, life goes on, even without him. My dad loved life so much it's hard for me to believe he let go easily. But I hope, kind of, in the end, that he was at peace with it. I'm not; well, sometimes, I am, but most of the time I'm not, and I have the rest of my life to ferociously love and be unwilling to let go of, to fight for and work for and struggle for and make peace with, to enjoy and contemplate and always, always find the beauty in.
After my brother called me and we spoke a little, after talking to my sister awhile, a year ago this afternoon, I went outside with my camera and took pictures of the day. It was a marvelous fall day in Colorado, and a storm was blowing in, the winds mightily whirling the turning leaves and wintering branches of trees about, and I took photos of the storm, of the trees, of the bright shining sun, of everything in the world around me changing, always, into something even more beautiful.
I love you, Daddy. I love you so much.
a rare photo of all of the siblings together: left to right, my stepsister Heather, my half-adopted sister Gerie, my half-brother BJ, me, my little sister Emily, at BJ's house after our father's memorial service last yearPS While I realize it's probably impossible, especially after reading this last rather warped and warbled view of things, to convince anyone of this: I am as equally thrilled at the times I did have with my father, if not more so, as I am about all of the things I miss about him, and will miss sharing with him. More on that later...have to run to work now...
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