Again, it is 5 a m and I am awake. My cough has woken me, hopefully not the rest of the household. Justin and Rebecca arrived last night from NYC to go to a wedding tomorrow night. They stayed here last night and today we are going out to look for houses.
Today is January 24, 2015, and it has been two months since my sweet father departed this earth. Exactly to the moment of his death at 4:30 a.m. is the time I received the phone call from Catholic Hospice that daddy had passed. I have a moment of silence and share it with myself. There is a dull ache in my heart, except it is on the right side, and spreads from there across my whole chest. My throat is tight and the loss affects my mind in a light band tightened around my forehead.
In no other words, I am sad. My loss is so final. Where is my father? When is he coming home? The child in me waits at the window watching rainfall, waiting with anticipation for daddy to return from a long day at work. I remember those day of waiting, wanting, the touch of the cold pane of glass against my little nose, foggy from breath only to be released when his car rolled in front of the house and moments later the door knob turned and clicked and there he was. The waiting was over.
My father was there for me through out my life. He did his best. He was not perfect, and he often felt guilty perhaps regretting his actions on a day he was angry or frustrated.
There was the day he left me at sleep away camp. My first summer away, I was going in to the fifth grade and I hated Camp Skymount. I was shy and fat, klutzy, and had “cooties” and was so miserable the first half of camp that by visiting day, all I could think about was wanted to go home. I engaged in the varied activated for campers and their families but at the end of the day, I made a decision about going home. I was going home with my parents come hell or high water. For hours my parents negotiated with me, the camp director and the head counselor and they convinced themselves that it would be better for me if they should say good bye and leave.
I know my parents struggled with this decision over the years and the three of us, my mother, father and me each had memories of them driving down the gravely up state NY country road and me standing in the middle of the street crying “Don’t go, don’t leave me.” That is a day, I remember experiencing a loss so significant in my life. This story was one of dad’s favorite to retell and reflect on how painful it was for him and my mother. A parent does for his child what might go against his nature for the benefit of the child, or at least, hoping that the more difficult choice will provide the best outcome for character growth. I survived the rest of the summer, and forgave them for abandoning me on the dusty country road. Life goes on.
Now what? My life goes on. I have his pictures on the dresser in the living room pictures that reflect his lifespan from childhood, adolescence, adult hood and eventually old age. The pictures I relate to the most are the ones when I was in my teens and he was in his fifties. He was handsome. He had a dark mass of thick chestnut colored hair that he wore for years in a pompadour and as fashion evolved the pompadour became something of a loose bang that fell over his forehead. Even in his old age, he still had a mass of hair, salt and pepper, a bit receded but mostly thick as in his youth.
I am waiting. I am waiting for the pain to become stronger and rip in to my life and cause a disruption in my daily activities. Why? I don’t know. I imagine that one day I am going to “get” that daddy is not coming home and that he is gone forever. Yet still, even as I say these words aloud, it does not penetrate me and I carry on waiting for his return.
How stupid I sound. How stubborn. As though my wishful thinking might come true. I know that he is gone from his life, from this world, from the atmosphere. We cannot see what is invisible and I sometimes wonder about my father’s spirit, his soul and wonder where he has gone. I have gotten no good answers. Last night, at my son-in-law Aaron’s 35-birthday party, I channeled my father and repeated a couple of really bad old jokes. They were bad, but in that, they were also humorous. It was an occasion that that would have been at, large crowd, nice restaurant. He would have enjoyed it, and he might have told us jokes. Really bad ones, and one thrown in at the end that might have been very funny. We would laugh or groan at daddy’s jokes but the love of humor to my father was what was most important. He often said, I family that laughs together stay together. That was a doctrine he lived by.