For a Year
One year ago, at this time, I was sleeping in my mom's bedroom. I slept all day, and when I woke up and went downstairs they'd already taken my father from his bedroom as well as the hospital bed he lay in for the last four or five months. I stood in the doorway with the open french doors we'd installed to keep the noise of the living room and kitchen away from him... And I stared into that empty room for a long, long time.
I was angry at him, but not really. It was just like him to be that jerk who chooses to die ten days before his eldest daughter's birthday. My birthday, which he always remembered because he used it in practically every password he ever had. He couldn't have forgotten! Couldn't he have stayed just that long!? Then again, when a guest wants to leave you can only so many times say: "Just stay a moment longer to finish out this television show! Oh wait, why don't you have dinner with us! It's such a lovely evening, let's have a walk around the block... Oh look, there's fireworks at the fairground!" Eventually the guest tires of you, no matter how much they love you. And they've got to leave.
This isn't about that day, though. It's about the 365 days between then and now. I thought it would be so much easier to live my life without him around, without the weight of his sickness on my heart. It was so painful to see him suffer that I thought not having to see that anymore, and knowing that wherever he was, he wasn't in pain any longer would make things so much easier. But it wasn't.
After he finally passed away it stopped being about his sickness and who he was at that very moment and HIM... and again started to be about what WE lost. After just so long of seeing my dad suffer, I forgot what it was like to see him vital and alive again. Slowly, over this last year, I've remembered and had to grieve all over again for that man. The man who thought that I was the smartest person in the world and told me so... Who believed I could do anything but scorned the things I chose to do. Who was always so strong and present and THERE that seeing him waste away was difficult for me to fully understand.
Eight months before he died,(and you can hear it in his voice, a bit... He sounds tired) I made a recording of my father and I having a conversation. He made me promise not to play the recording for anyone but the family, but I still have it on my iPod at all times. I've never yet had the chance to play it for them. It's the two of us, talking about all the things he's done in his life over crunching and eating Chinese food. The audio skips at times, but I still remember what we said even in the empty spaces. You can hear the music playing over the intercom as my dad tells me what he learned in his life.
He talks about trying many different things, learning to throw a tomahawk and get sap from maples and make syrup... Camping and building and drawing a bow. Trying to dance and playing classical music. He talks of how embracing his own inherent mediocrity in gifts and talents allowed him to learn to try new things. Tells me stories of playing stickball behind the Clark's gas station.
More important than what he says is listening to his voice say it, and listening to me respond. It makes me remember the rapport between us... It makes me remember that this man whose voice I'm hearing did exist and that I didn't just invent him. We loved each other and we were so alike. And even though he is gone, nothing can take the part of him that I carry with me away from me.
It's been a hard year... It's been a long year. But somewhere in that year, I stood back up and faced forward. I don't think I need to worry overmuch about whether or not my dad would be proud of me... I don't think that anything I do could make him less proud of me than he already was. I've grown up a lot since he left me, partly because I had to. And I don't know who I'd be if he hadn't gotten sick. Before he was, I leaned a lot on him to tell me what to do with my life.
Even though at times I still feel lost, like I don't know what I'm doing with my life, I understand that horrible things can happen to me, and I can deal with it and come out the other end. Perhaps leaving me was the last gift he could give me... I had to be pushed down in order to make it back up stronger.
I was angry at him, but not really. It was just like him to be that jerk who chooses to die ten days before his eldest daughter's birthday. My birthday, which he always remembered because he used it in practically every password he ever had. He couldn't have forgotten! Couldn't he have stayed just that long!? Then again, when a guest wants to leave you can only so many times say: "Just stay a moment longer to finish out this television show! Oh wait, why don't you have dinner with us! It's such a lovely evening, let's have a walk around the block... Oh look, there's fireworks at the fairground!" Eventually the guest tires of you, no matter how much they love you. And they've got to leave.
This isn't about that day, though. It's about the 365 days between then and now. I thought it would be so much easier to live my life without him around, without the weight of his sickness on my heart. It was so painful to see him suffer that I thought not having to see that anymore, and knowing that wherever he was, he wasn't in pain any longer would make things so much easier. But it wasn't.
After he finally passed away it stopped being about his sickness and who he was at that very moment and HIM... and again started to be about what WE lost. After just so long of seeing my dad suffer, I forgot what it was like to see him vital and alive again. Slowly, over this last year, I've remembered and had to grieve all over again for that man. The man who thought that I was the smartest person in the world and told me so... Who believed I could do anything but scorned the things I chose to do. Who was always so strong and present and THERE that seeing him waste away was difficult for me to fully understand.
Eight months before he died,(and you can hear it in his voice, a bit... He sounds tired) I made a recording of my father and I having a conversation. He made me promise not to play the recording for anyone but the family, but I still have it on my iPod at all times. I've never yet had the chance to play it for them. It's the two of us, talking about all the things he's done in his life over crunching and eating Chinese food. The audio skips at times, but I still remember what we said even in the empty spaces. You can hear the music playing over the intercom as my dad tells me what he learned in his life.
He talks about trying many different things, learning to throw a tomahawk and get sap from maples and make syrup... Camping and building and drawing a bow. Trying to dance and playing classical music. He talks of how embracing his own inherent mediocrity in gifts and talents allowed him to learn to try new things. Tells me stories of playing stickball behind the Clark's gas station.
More important than what he says is listening to his voice say it, and listening to me respond. It makes me remember the rapport between us... It makes me remember that this man whose voice I'm hearing did exist and that I didn't just invent him. We loved each other and we were so alike. And even though he is gone, nothing can take the part of him that I carry with me away from me.
It's been a hard year... It's been a long year. But somewhere in that year, I stood back up and faced forward. I don't think I need to worry overmuch about whether or not my dad would be proud of me... I don't think that anything I do could make him less proud of me than he already was. I've grown up a lot since he left me, partly because I had to. And I don't know who I'd be if he hadn't gotten sick. Before he was, I leaned a lot on him to tell me what to do with my life.
Even though at times I still feel lost, like I don't know what I'm doing with my life, I understand that horrible things can happen to me, and I can deal with it and come out the other end. Perhaps leaving me was the last gift he could give me... I had to be pushed down in order to make it back up stronger.