Tears

I spent a long time longing for my family; craving to be held as this child yearned for her mother. Just as she has been relegated to drawing chalk images imagining the comfort she needed, I ran after mirages of what I thought my family should be. Everytime my family looked similar to what I needed I would pound the ground harder but I would arrive to find the hot sand without water to quench my thirst. 

Many tears have fallen for the family that did not exist. Each told a story of sadness, heartbreak, loss; I am an adult, however, and I refuse to be relegated to chalk drawings and lost images. 

My family will be who I choose. They will be those that love me as I am and do not judge my idiosynchracies. I deserve to be loved and I chose to seek those who will love me unconditionally.

Closure

The topic of 'life lessons' is timely, although painful for me to experience and write about.

Life is a finite thing. We are not guaranteed our next breath, our next day, our next family event. In a moment a person can be gone. It doesn't matter if communication and conversations were a common life even because the idea of the person not existing any more can send you (me) for a tail spin, regardless.

My grandmother passed away last friday and we didn't have a good relationship, if you could call what we had a relationship at all. But, she was a holder of information about my dad that I'll never know, there will no longer be promise of hugs, and the possibility of love and understanding. The whole side of my family that encompasses my grandmother as the matriarch never talks with us and the memorial service will, likely, be the only time I will see so much of this side of my family in one place.

The second life lesson is to seek closure. Don't leave lose ends thinking there'll be time to go back to the hard stuff later. One of the most important reasons I am going back to Texas for the memorial service is to find closure for all the ways this family was not, and will never be, what I need and deserve. I will not approach them because I know this isn't what I need. But being able to let go of that childhood fantasy will help me grasp more fully the family that I've created and do have.

One Year Later

One year after my dad’s death I am 365 days stronger. I am familiar with heart-breaking acts of compassion, acts of love, forgiveness, and grace. I know what it means to have a father and to have a male figure to hold my hand and just sit with me. I miss my dad. I miss the time we spent together. I’m glad I was able to do the things for him my other sibling’s would/could not do for him. Having to take care of his affairs made a young woman grow up rather quickly. We were mad at each other, for far too many years. But, if only for necessity, all was forgiven. For three weeks we shared hurts and joys and meals.

The month of August was tough on me last year. I flew out to New Mexico on August 1^st to see what was ‘really’ going on. My step-dad had been dying for years and it was my siblings and my understanding that this was another ploy for attention from his estranged children. The next day, while my dad was seeing his primary doctor, I went up to the oncology ward, and I found out, I knew our time was limited. From then until he found out on Friday I had a heavy heart. Our time to make up was no longer a day to be put forward. His time was now a finite commodity…the time to forgive was now.

His sentence was 4-6 months. And our journey to find each other started. During the day I gathered paperwork, made cremation arrangements, arranged for siblings and family to visit. I urged them that this was pressing, that it wasn’t a lie that he was going to die. At night I would stay up with him, get his insulin, take care his needs. We would watch TV together. He would tell me stories about Vietnam. We opened up to each other.

We talked about our anger. Unforgiveness that had been brewing for over 9 years. I talked to him about why I moved out. How my mother’s struggles were affecting me. What their relationship was doing to me. I was too young to do all that he asked of me. He had forgotten why I moved, but never forgot the hurt. I had been forgiving him for a long time for the comments, the hurt he caused in my own life. But, as soon as he denied, or a new disservice happened? I was having to forgive him all over again. During that time, I was able to just throw those things out the window. With only 4 months left I knew if I held on to the hurt we would both lose

Eventually, I flew back home and jumped back into work. I worked everyday to try and save money in order to take time off in a couple months and go back to New Mexico. I applied for a southwest card so I could get a free flight. I called him everyday.

After only 9 days my mom had called me sobbing: they were taking my dad to the hospital by ambulance. She gave the doctor my number so he could explain what was going on, my mom wasn’t able to convey all that was happening. And the doctor called. He explained that my dad wasn’t breathing on his own, that his blood pressure was dropping, that he was on medication in order to keep it up. That night I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Instead I thought about my dad. I struggled with whether or not I was going to fly out. The next morning the doctor called and said he was on the maximum dose of three medications. They weren’t going to give him anymore; he might not make it through the night.

So I flew back to Albuquerque. In the bed, with all the medications and fluids they were pumping into him, in order to keep him alive, he had swelled up 50%. My dad was unrecognizable. I was strong, I didn’t cry. The only time I broke down was when I told him I would make sure we followed his will. My sisters flew in, and we gathered around his bedside.

The next day, August 28^th, I told the doctors to take him off the ventilator. My mom couldn’t tell them to take him off of life support, to let him die. By 12:30 he was gone. A few days later my dad was in a shoebox. For all the life he lived, his death left him in something that could be placed in a closet and forgotten. I brought my dad back with me when I flew home. My dad wished to be with his mom in Ohio. Security had to ask what was in my bag. On the plane I couldn’t handle another’s luggage on top of my box. My senses were acute. I was hurting and afraid.

Thanksgiving I used my free flight and I did take my dad’s ashes up to Ohio. My sister and I spread them where he desired. Well, the portion that my disobedient self did not spread in the Hudson.

My dad’s death hurt me. A lot. I was forced to do many things out of necessity. I also gained sisters I had lost. I gained strength. I gained insight. Part of the insight was how much I would have loved to be able to send my dad a father’s day card. Because of the unending anger I never did. Isn’t it sad, when a person is gone is when we wish to have the ability to be sentimental? To realize that he will never walk me down the aisle and he will not be able to hold my children. But we also had a wonderful three weeks.

Dad, on the anniversary of your death, I want to say thank you. Thank you for your forgiveness. Thank you for trusting me with your final wishes. I know how much you love me and I’m grateful. Most of all, thank you for teaching me such a true lesson on dying, on grief, and on growing up.

My dad

         I have one memory of my father. It was at my sister’s ninth birthday party. It was held at an old roller-skating rink with dingy eggshell-white brick walls; the kind of place where the whole building reeks of old roller-skates worn too many times by people that probably have foot fungus. I was wearing a red onesie, with untamable, curly-short hair. When he came in I was on one side of the hallway and he was on the other. I saw him and I went running towards him screaming,” Daddy!” He must have been running also, because I didn’t have to run very far before he scooped me up into his arms.

Someone took a picture at that point; I know because I’ve seen it hidden in boxes I wasn’t supposed to see. I knew no hurt then, only love and I loved my father so very much. By now the image has faded some in my mind’s eye, but his smile and the love I felt is still very clear and vivid. I guess, maybe, that’s why it hurts so much, because I knew his love. Now there’s this hole in my heart where his love and his presence should be. Time will never heal that wound

         My dad died a short time later and I spent most of my childhood and early twenties angry at my dad. But, I’ve grown up a lot since then and I’m no longer angry with my father. I just feel this immense sadness when I think he felt he had to die. My uncle took me to my dad’s gravesite, for the first time in 2004. It was awkward because my dad doesn’t have a gravestone, you know? He really amounted to nothing, even in death; his life has amounted to a grave without his name. I wonder how deep of a depression he had to have been in, how alone and forsaken he had to feel to think he had no one to turn to. Most suicide attempts say they felt the deep longing to live immediately after they take those pills, kick over the chair, or jump off that bridge. It’s sad to think my father also felt the longing to live in his final moments of life. His death has left so many “what ifs?”

         Realizing I am not like my father, that my family does not see me as a failure has taken time, tears, and many falls. It’s in getting up from the fall and persevering that separates me from my father. Having and seeing in my family the emptiness my dad has left behind is all I’ll ever need to have the determination to keep going. I’ve learned to be grateful to my father for giving me life and I’m going to live. Because of my father I am both broken and whole. I’m caring and understanding of other’s plights, but above all else, I’m fiercely driven to make a difference, to leave something more than pictures and broken hearts behind.