It's Been Six Years
When I was little, I would cry at the end of the Little Mermaid. Don’t get me wrong. It was my favorite Disney movie by a mile. But as King Triton rose up to the boat and Ariel whispered I love you, Daddy, I just couldn’t handle it. How could she chose between the two men that she loved? How was it possible?
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When I was born, my dad told my mom that I had to be a girl. If not, he said, she was to return me promptly. She wanted a boy. Yet, for the first two years of my life, my dad, like many first time fathers, was scared to death of me. A baby and a premie to boot, I was too small and too sick. He was afraid he would break me.
But I adored my daddy.
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As I got older, he worked harder and harder to give my mom and I the lives that we wanted. Working nights at the postal office and sometimes extra jobs, he’d still wake up early in the mornings to drive me to school, always kept the house in shape, and weekly would take me grocery shopping with him. These are the times that I remember most vividly-Moose Tracks Ice Cream, surprise magazines, and childhood stories.
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The first time that I really vividly remember being moved by music was in the car with my daddy. It was Lynyrd Skynrd’s Freebird. On the entrance ramp to the freeway, we got to the guitar solo and my heart ached and my eyes watered and I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to lose someone that I loved.
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Six Christmases ago was spent on a cruise. We called my grandmother from Puerto Rico on Christmas day. There weren’t many gifts and there wasn’t much cheer. Only taking our minds off of things.
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At home, last week, in an effort to clean out the shed, we went through the boxes that contain the entirety of my childhood-toys and toys that had never been played with because I had no one to play with and beautiful expensive pageant dresses and recital costumes. I decided to move them into my hope chest.
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When I was little, I used to spend hours and hours in the bathtub. My infatuation with water was worrying to my mother and they immediately put me in swimming lessons lest I decide to take a dive when no one else was around. The first day of class, without any qualms, I jumped right in to the deep-end and never looked back. I believed if I spent long enough in the water, I’d turn into a mermaid. I was three.
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Six Thanksgivings ago I ate only leftovers, surprised at the kindness of strangers. In the hospital, visiting my daddy, unconscious and hooked up to all kinds of machines, a kind faced doctor came in. “How’s his heart today, doctor?” “His heart’s fine. But… it’s not his heart you ought to be worried about. It’s his brain.” I didn’t grasp what that meant.
In the hospital parking lot, the whole family on our way to Cracker Barrel for Thanksgiving dinner, Michael tripped and dropped baby Jonathan on the pavement. My mom had a nervous breakdown then and there and I just ran. I ran away. Lauren’s mom came to pick me up. I ate my Thanksgiving dinner in silence.
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Opening my hope chest, the first thing on top was my daddy’s army medals. I looked at each and every one, delicately running my fingers over their imprints. They were copious and tarnished and told stories I’d never heard before. I’ve never felt so far away. “The ribbons aren’t there because he was buried with them,” my mom said. This opened the flood gate and I fought back tears as she brought me, item by item, the rest of his belongings that she has kept. The memories get farther and farther away. What I have left of him can fit into a box.
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I brought my new puppy to my daddy’s funeral. I spent the days in shock. As a sixteen year old, I had planned a full military funeral-21 gun salute and all. My mother was inconsolable and desolate. Sunny was just a baby, red and rambunctious, missing his parents. We, at least, had that in common. So many people came. So many sent flowers. So many people told me how much I looked like him. So many people told me how proud he was of me. We were never alone in the house. My grandparents moved in temporarily and taught me how to drive. For the first time ever, I saw my grandfather cry. "That was my son," he said, "I was supposed to go first."
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Sitting in group counseling, three months after my daddy died, I was angry that so many people still felt their losses. Children there had lost their parents two, four or even five years prior. I couldn’t understand then, how they could still be ailing.
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Five years ago today, Thanksgiving, I got a phone call. My great grandfather was dead, one year to the day from my father. We were incredibly close. I spent the day with Lauren’s family, the video from when I was three years old playing in my mind over and over. In it, Big Paw was fastening my overalls, I was three, and the world was made of goodness. I didn’t go to the funeral.
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I cannot believe that through the course of Lauren and my friendship, as of this point, she has known me longer without my father than she did with him around. This fact hit me like a ton of bricks.
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Driving past Rollins College, my daddy always used to say, “I wish I could afford to send you to Rollins. You know, Mr. Rogers went there.”
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Six years later, I am a different person. I have learned that six years later, it can still hurt, and that’s okay. There are things I’ve done that I’m proud of and there are things that I’m not. I wonder what he’d think, six years later.
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Six years later, after I’ve had it tattooed on my body, Freebird still makes me teary. I still sit for hours in the bathtub, hoping to grow a tail and swim away. And when Ariel says, I love you, Daddy, it still makes me cry.
