My dad passed away. It’s been 9 months since his funeral, and it still hasn’t really hit me. I’m honestly hoping someday it will. Some days I sit in the silence of my space and say over and over again “My dad died, My dad’s dead. My dad’s dead. He’s dead. He’s gone.” I don’t know if I’m trying to find meaning to it or trying to understand that it’s real. I’ve cried, don’t get me wrong; but somewhere in me is absent of what I feel like a daughter should feel when she loses her father. I’ve always said that the size of your grief is equal to the size of the hole that the person who died has left in your life. Maybe I grieved my dad three years prior so that hole had already been filled in with the love of friends and life.
I knew him once upon a time, but as we all change, I am not sure who this man was. This man whose hand I held as I whispered forgiveness into his ear and kissed him goodbye moments before he took his last breath. I remember him in segments. I remember most things this way, but I think my memories of him particularly, are indicative of our relationship.
In my early childhood, he was the man who would set up the projector in our big family room to show us old films. He was the man who would give me vocabulary words to look up. Oddly, this is one of my favorite memories. He would give me a list of words and I would retreat to my space with a notebook and a dictionary. I would carefully write each word down, taking care to underline it before looking up the word, writing down the definition and writing a sentence using the word. I would proudly take my work to him to show. I also remember trips to the local historical society, or maybe I have formed a memory around this based off of a picture of us outside of the building. I do remember baseball games on weekends, but it’s even hard to reconcile the family who we became to these people who actually felt like a family. In my teenage years, I remember sneaking into his old records on nights when he and my mother were out. I relished these moments of old music and of comedy albums so vulgar that I didn’t really understand what was being said, but I laughed anyway. I would carefully put each record back exactly where it was and how I found it so that he would never know this indulgence of mine. I would find out later that he knew. I now have some of these records that I claimed after his passing and dare to enjoy them on occasion.
Even older, I have memories of him making me work on my own car. Once changing the alternator on a scorching 90-degree day with terrible cramps and an even worse attitude. Another time, I remember calling him early one morning when I was 21 or 22 after hopping a ride with a stranger when I got a flat tire and needed help. I was pulled over on the freeway, in a dress and heels, trying to change it. A man stopped and told me that he didn’t have time to help as he was late for work but he could give me a ride to his job at Buckeye Steel and I could use the phone to call someone. Not knowing what else to do, I got into this man’s car and off I went. I called my dad and told him about hitching a ride and about the flat. I told him that I could not get the bolts off of my tire to change it and asked him for help. He told me that he couldn’t come because he had to get to work. I hung up the phone deflated. Along came a different man who was getting off of work and wondered what a pretty girl in a dress was doing at a dirty factory. He offered to change the tire for me, so I hopped into his car and he changed my tire for me and wished me well. I think this was when I first learned my father would never fully be there for me so I had to be as self-sufficient as I possibly could.
Somewhere in the middle of the in’s and out’s of our relationship, I just resigned myself to the fact that maybe I misunderstood the things that I thought happened in my life with my family. Maybe I remembered things wrong and the issue was, in fact, me. There was a day where my dad and I were sitting on the deck of one of their homes looking out onto their huge backyard. We were silent as he had something that he was reflecting on that I jumped in earlier that day and offered assistance to resolve. He said to me but not looking at me, “You did a good job raising yourself, kid.” It caught me off guard. I don’t even recall that I said anything, but the acknowledgment that I had been mostly alone in my teenage years was needed and welcomed.
We were able to develop a relationship after this. We talked about movies and his own feelings about family dynamics that burdened him. We talked about current events but mostly we talked about music. This closeness we shared was unique and strained in its own right, because while we were close, it was a secret in ways. By that, I mean, it wasn’t shared with the family, it was just me and him talking in his office space that he also used as a bedroom. He never came to my home, we never went to dinners or ball games or walks or anything. I always asked and it was always declined. I just accepted it and took what I could get.
At some point there was another issue with my sister, which resulted in me distancing myself from her (this is a seperate story). This resulted in him eventually pulling away from me again, although not completely. I was demoted to being able to reach out to him only by email and by phone only on Sundays when my mother was at church. Again, I just accepted this.
I remember the day it all changed completely, though, not in the way that I wanted. I had been trying to reach him for weeks because I wanted his advice on something I was dealing with. When I finally reached him, I didn’t get the advice that I needed but a surprise I could never have imagined. I am not quite sure what was wrong with him, but to me, he was in this weird mood that seemed unnaturally euphoric. Who is this man? Did someone take over my fathers body? I don’t really remember most of the things he said but I remember word for word the only part that mattered to me,”I made my choice and I’ve learned to live with it and you’re going to have to learn to live with it too.” What? I didn’t understand what he meant and to this day, I am not quite sure why I didn’t ask at that moment. This will always be a regret of mine. We ended the phone call and despite my leaving several messages and sending several emails, that was the last time I spoke with my father until 3 years later when I forced myself to go see him when my niece told me of his illness.
When I was told, I wasn’t sure what to do with the news. She was told by my mother and/or sister not to tell me. What should I do? Did I just take it as information? Did I run to his bedside risking being turned away? Did I just leave the information where it was and go on with my life? After a lot of prayer and soul searching, I decided that I would go see him and if he turned me away, I would leave and not look back.
It’s such an odd feeling going to see a parent under these circumstances. . The first visit was difficult. There was a lot of formality. Every unanswered phone call, unreturned message and email sitting between us was like a big bitter, angry and hurtful elephant in the room. I think I held my breath the whole time. I left not knowing if I would go back, but after talking with a friend, I decided I would go back the next week.
On this second visit, I risked some vulnerability, I told him I had wanted to come sooner but I wasn’t sure if he wanted to see me. His reply to this was, “It wasn’t okay for you to come before but it is now.” I wasn’t sure what this meant and honestly, I still don’t, but it was very clear that he hadn’t wanted me there those few years. This was followed up with him saying that I really helped him. I can only assume that he meant by my not being there. I started going twice a week and eventually daily. We talked about normal things. Music, his annoyance with my mother but never really his illness and never why he decided I no longer deserved a space in his life. I offered things. To clean up his space. To care for him in ways I saw needed. To take care of his feet, something he had always taken pride in, which was currently not being done. These were always declined. I wish I could say that we got closer or that he showed me he cared that I was there. He didn’t. I kept going.
Six months of visits. Six months of silence. Six months of conversations that meant nothing to me because they were not what I wanted to hear. Sitting. Helping. Loving as much as I was able to. Wanting an explanation but knowing I couldn’t dare ask.
He was so strong. I remember his muscles when I was little, watching him work on Bertha, his white car that he loved so much. Watching his big arms as he worked in sweatshirts where he cut the sleeves from. He was still strong but his mind was leaving. My father was one of the most intelligent men I knew. He remembered some things from his life and still talked of them all but there was also so much rambling. The nothing that flowed so disjointed from his mouth. Who was this man? I tried to find the man I knew when I was little, in my teenage years, in my young adult years, even the man who told me that I needed to come to terms with no longer having a father.
I could not reconcile this as the same man. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe a gift from God to spare me the grief of losing him again. Maybe the three years were also a gift to spare me not only grief but also perhaps spare me from the person he became in those three years. I’ll never know. I also will never dare utter that he made a choice not to speak to me. I wouldn’t want anyone to think less of him. It feels so funny to be so protective over a man who hurt me so deeply. Maybe one day I will not care and just speak my truth freely, but for now, I do care and I don’t want his memory smudged.
The blues and other hues of a brown eyed girl 
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