Dear Dad,
I miss you.
This time last year, I was, I think, still too in shock to realize how painful this is, this day is. Your absence was not yet real. It was just as if I was, as always, away and we’d simply failed to speak.
Today, however, the presence of your absence is palpable. You are not here, will not be here; the force of that realization stopped my breath. I dressed, but could not make it outside to walk to church. Made breakfast, but could not bear to eat. I am trying, desperately, to will myself to finish packing, so that I can,in a few hours, take my plane and leave. Mainly all I’ve been able of doing as pacing my floors, wetting the wood with my tears, trying to breathe, trying to stifle the rising weeping & wailing.
I miss you, but I am not angry, at least, not with you. With the Lord? Yes. And unapologetically so. I barter with God in my mind, my heart, to take me back, us back, and to just give us 1 week and 1 day. 1 week and 1 day, and I would’ve been home. Then, I would have gotten to hear your voice, to see the way the corners of your eyes wrinkled when you laughed. I would have gotten to come home one last time, arriving at the airport, knowing you were already there, having come for me – as you always did.
And I’d had plans. I had plans for the first time I’d have been home for father’s day in more than a decade, the first time as an adult that I would have been there on that day. I had plans – for you, for us – to head down to the bait and tackle store, then out on the water, fishing; eventually making our way back home to get down to the work of preparing the catch, and me relegating you to the stool in the kitchen corner as I made dinner & you’d so often done for me– mac&cheese, greens & cornbread (just so I could ask you one more time, “Now – how much do you use …”) & for you, even red velvet. And, finally we’d let the day close sitting out back on the patio debating the current state of affairs, though, just as likely, simply sitting back talking shit as we watched the sun go down, each with a glass of gin in hand. Yes, I had plans.
I have spent this last year filling – my time, my space, with anything to which I could grab hold. I have bought more music, read more books, gone to more events, talked and watched and written, joked and smiled, jammed my hours with dancing and cleaning and exercising and traveling, filled it with the presence of friends, the presence of men, I have even ventured so far as to go back to church And yet even with all these scripted minutes, these meticulously scheduled hours that have filled time – the void you’ve left just seems to expand, multiplying itself by itself, exponentially. I miss you.
Ever the girl that goes, be it by road or train or plane, I have trekked my way to places where I knew few, where I knew no one at all. And yet, it had never occurred to me before to be afraid. I am. Now, for the first time in my adult life - I am scared. I flinch and pause, terrified when I see the name of someone back home on my caller id – wondering, what this time? When I find myself somehow outside in summer storm, my chest tightens & tears well in my eyes each time I hear the sound of thunder – praying, Lord please, not me too. I am, for the first time in the decade that I’ve been flying across the ocean, inexplicably, afraid.
I am afraid, now, because each day since you’ve been gone I’ve stepped out into the world, feeling viscerally exposed. You are gone. There are no longer arms to which I can turn and run to when I’m uncertain of my steps, there is no safe place where I can go to for my cries to be soothed when my heart, so tenderly fragile (despite all appearance to the contrary), has been broken again, there is no shelter of peace where I can go when I have tired from those responsibilities (which you were ever inclined to tell me were not mine to bear).
You left, and then Barbara – and I lost the only two places of rest, shelters of peace that I had in my life here on this side of the world. I am afraid, because I fear, that if you both can be gone, then I may arrive in Paris and find that the one last place I had on this earth where I could go and not simply be cared about, but for, I fear I may get there and that sense of shelter may also be disappeared. I shudder; at that thought, I tremble.
You are gone, and I feel, fear that I may never feel safe again.
I miss you Daddy.
I miss you.
This time last year, I was, I think, still too in shock to realize how painful this is, this day is. Your absence was not yet real. It was just as if I was, as always, away and we’d simply failed to speak.
Today, however, the presence of your absence is palpable. You are not here, will not be here; the force of that realization stopped my breath. I dressed, but could not make it outside to walk to church. Made breakfast, but could not bear to eat. I am trying, desperately, to will myself to finish packing, so that I can,in a few hours, take my plane and leave. Mainly all I’ve been able of doing as pacing my floors, wetting the wood with my tears, trying to breathe, trying to stifle the rising weeping & wailing.
I miss you, but I am not angry, at least, not with you. With the Lord? Yes. And unapologetically so. I barter with God in my mind, my heart, to take me back, us back, and to just give us 1 week and 1 day. 1 week and 1 day, and I would’ve been home. Then, I would have gotten to hear your voice, to see the way the corners of your eyes wrinkled when you laughed. I would have gotten to come home one last time, arriving at the airport, knowing you were already there, having come for me – as you always did.
And I’d had plans. I had plans for the first time I’d have been home for father’s day in more than a decade, the first time as an adult that I would have been there on that day. I had plans – for you, for us – to head down to the bait and tackle store, then out on the water, fishing; eventually making our way back home to get down to the work of preparing the catch, and me relegating you to the stool in the kitchen corner as I made dinner & you’d so often done for me– mac&cheese, greens & cornbread (just so I could ask you one more time, “Now – how much do you use …”) & for you, even red velvet. And, finally we’d let the day close sitting out back on the patio debating the current state of affairs, though, just as likely, simply sitting back talking shit as we watched the sun go down, each with a glass of gin in hand. Yes, I had plans.
I have spent this last year filling – my time, my space, with anything to which I could grab hold. I have bought more music, read more books, gone to more events, talked and watched and written, joked and smiled, jammed my hours with dancing and cleaning and exercising and traveling, filled it with the presence of friends, the presence of men, I have even ventured so far as to go back to church And yet even with all these scripted minutes, these meticulously scheduled hours that have filled time – the void you’ve left just seems to expand, multiplying itself by itself, exponentially. I miss you.
Ever the girl that goes, be it by road or train or plane, I have trekked my way to places where I knew few, where I knew no one at all. And yet, it had never occurred to me before to be afraid. I am. Now, for the first time in my adult life - I am scared. I flinch and pause, terrified when I see the name of someone back home on my caller id – wondering, what this time? When I find myself somehow outside in summer storm, my chest tightens & tears well in my eyes each time I hear the sound of thunder – praying, Lord please, not me too. I am, for the first time in the decade that I’ve been flying across the ocean, inexplicably, afraid.
I am afraid, now, because each day since you’ve been gone I’ve stepped out into the world, feeling viscerally exposed. You are gone. There are no longer arms to which I can turn and run to when I’m uncertain of my steps, there is no safe place where I can go to for my cries to be soothed when my heart, so tenderly fragile (despite all appearance to the contrary), has been broken again, there is no shelter of peace where I can go when I have tired from those responsibilities (which you were ever inclined to tell me were not mine to bear).
You left, and then Barbara – and I lost the only two places of rest, shelters of peace that I had in my life here on this side of the world. I am afraid, because I fear, that if you both can be gone, then I may arrive in Paris and find that the one last place I had on this earth where I could go and not simply be cared about, but for, I fear I may get there and that sense of shelter may also be disappeared. I shudder; at that thought, I tremble.
You are gone, and I feel, fear that I may never feel safe again.
I miss you Daddy.
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