i gave my dad a birthday card. it was his 49th birthday and being the ominous one, i included a letter in it, telling him everything positive that i could about how i felt for him. i thought it would be his last birthday card from me, and i was right. he cried when he read the letter, cuz he was touched, he said, but i think that maybe he also knew what i was doing – getting it all on paper, as if it proved how special he was to me more than it would have if i’d simply told him. which i tried to, everytime i spoke to him.
today would have been his 50th birthday. he died on may 8th, 57 days ago – 78 before the due date of his first grandchild. and until the last few months before he went, he looked like he was maybe getting into his 40s. he was a guy who resembled jesus to some, a hippy to others and kenny loggins to anyone who really knew what kenny loggins looks like.
i wrote that letter for a couple of reasons.
i didn’t want him to doubt how i truly felt about the positive part of our relationship. he was my first and greatest best friend, when he wasn’t my mortal enemy. he taught me to always look for a 2nd, if not 3rd side to every story (something that i think gives me a perspective hard to find in a mid-twenty-something), when he wasn’t drilling me for my story and telling me it wasn’t good enough. and, let’s be honest, he gave me my metabolism, though i had to wait 25 years for it to kick in – 18 of which were spent in the grips of starvation, exercise and/or a vicious binge-purge cycle.
i naively thought that if i could write down everything picture perfectly, as far as my little 2-person family was concerned, it meant that i was okay with our relationship and the things that had brought us to that point. i thought that if nothing bad was in that heartfelt, soul gripping letter, than it meant that i had moved on.
i needed to move on and i needed him to know that i had. if only so that our last time together could be as positive and inspiring as possible and not just a pain-filled dramatic exit to his life. it wasn’t entirely right of me, i now know, because the two of us were almost always authentic with each other during my adult life – honest to blunt cruelty, sometimes. that letter was a half truth.
see, i knew before he was even diagnosed that he would die within a year or two. i knew that he had the big C and i knew how hard it would be on both of us because i depended on him the most that i could on anyone, being someone who doesn’t accept help and rarely asks for it. he was the first person i called when the baby that the doctor and i had tried for for 7 months was miscarried – my 6th one and the only one that i had ever really wanted, until this time. he stayed up until all hours letting me cry about how it wasn’t fair and telling me that it wasn’t about fairness. he got off the phone 2 hours before having to go to work.
he was exactly me and my antithesis, as well. he wouldn’t admit fear – he would surpass fear. he wouldn’t say “it’s not fair”. he wouldn’t spend his last time partying and vacationing and blowing all of the money that he could get his hands on – he did the income taxes that he had been procrastinating over for 5 years. he didn’t sell everything and downgrade to a smaller space – he lived alone in a 3 bedroom house with computer parts and mechanic tools piled to the rafters of a 1,000 square foot basement.
he was both wise and stubborn. humble and hornery. intelligent and perfectionistic. he was most of the components that make me up.
besides all of my positive features, things that i admire in others as well as myself and hope to instill in my own children, he gave me a few things that i wish i could have given back. that haven’t helped me to move on or grieve or be okay totally with how things were left.
he taught me to flinch when someone raises a hand near my face. he taught me to expect someone who is upset with me to raise that hand. to be disappointed and confused that someone wouldn’t care enough about me to want to slap some fucking sense into me. that’s what love is, right? wanting to beat the shit out of someone because that is the HUGENESS of how much you care for them.
i learned to dodge when a flame comes near my skin. my scars learned to fade and heal all on their own. to this day, i have 4 scars – two from a surgery, one from an IV and one from him. that one was an accident and all the others that were not accidental have fled my topography.
i was taught to turn off the things that hurt, so that i won’t have to hurt and will just feel nothing. i even forget things, sometimes. occassionally, i forget that he’s even gone and then i remember and it hits me like a truck. and i’ll cry for a minute or two and then i go into this place, unintentionally and without control over it, and then that truck-beating feels like heroin and i start to mentally sigh and say “oh well.” oh well?
i was schooled in the art of logic above feelings. and most of all i learned that intelligence has nothing to do with how often you do your homework or go to school or marks that you receive while in class – as long as he never had to hear about how often those things didn’t take place. if he heard about it, then it was all that mattered and i would never be good enough because if i got 97%, i was missing the other 3 and if i scored perfect than i should have been working far far ahead of everyone else for extra credit. i was a slacker who “did not work to her potential.”
i learned a form of self-hatred and guilt that could only be inspired by someone who felt the same about themself and couldn’t show it. he taught me to be him.
and so today, and the last few weeks, i’ve reflected upon how much i really haven’t moved on. how maybe fractured ribs have remelded and chipped cheekbones have eroded, but my heart is still a cavern of denial about what really went on and how i really felt about it. and when people have asked me about how i’m dealing with and have been affected by his death, the need to appear ok overwhelms the need to be honest and i talk of missing him and my admiration. today, i will start to move forward.
today i will realize that my daddy was not a fallen superhero, but a man trying to succeed without the benefit of godliness.
