Dear Dad,
It’s been two years since you suddenly
left this earth, Dad, and I don’t miss you any less than I did when it was all
happening. One would think it would be easier by now—“time heals all wounds,”
right? But as a couple of understanding people have reminded me, grief is not linear, it waxes and wanes. You always told me not to sweat the small stuff
because it’s the big stuff that would kill me. I thought that this day two
years ago was surely the big stuff, I’d finally seen it… Yet, now, thinking of
it in your terms (thanks to your unique brand of ludicrous and yet wise
perspective—often more crude than “stuff,” let’s be honest here), your death
and the process of grief itself just might be more like decidedly varying waves
of “small” shit; nearly constant, often unreasonable, hardly predictable.
I did not anticipate ever
speaking from the podium of our church and giving a relatively (stress on
relative) composed speech to a crowded room given my limited at the time
experience in public speaking; I definitely didn’t want it to be your eulogy,
which I cried while writing but not while reading. I never realized that
listening to Born to Run by Bruce
Springsteen or Frank Sinatra’s Main Event:
Live on crackly vinyl would most often bring me joy and an urge to dance
but sometimes, at random, lead to a breakdown (complete with ugly crying, is
there any other way, really?). I did not anticipate family gatherings,
holidays, and milestones like moving into college or getting my first semester
of straight As to feel like cataclysmic betrayal in two ways. Me the betrayer doing
these things without you (or so it felt) and you too for not being there to congratulate
me, interrogate me about it, and immediately pick up the phone to brag about it
to anyone who would listen to you (though you would have insisted you were “just
sharing good news” with people). You told me if I ever got a nose piercing
(like I wanted) it’d have to be over your dead body and that you’d surely roll
in your grave. When I did it last January, I think I secretly yearned for the rumble
of the earth (though I don’t actually believe in that… and you were cremated,
which would also pose a practical problem, I suppose) indicating your disapproval
and thus that you still had an opinion—if I didn’t like the nose stud so much,
it might’ve been a disappointing experience as such. Ah, yes, these are the
haphazard waves of small shit I suppose.
Although I have faith that you
are in a better place now, I still miss you and I don’t understand why you had
to go and I still find myself regretting all the time we didn’t spend together,
things I didn’t ask you, things we didn’t do, things we’ll never do. I don’t
mean to, but sometimes I still agonize over it. I yelled at God about it, but I
realized that it didn’t do me any good until it turned to crying to Him. Other
torturous phenomena include the fact that it’s only been about half a year
since the last time I picked up my phone to call and ask you a question and got
to my recent calls before I remembered that I couldn’t. Admittedly, though it’s
so weird and painful to say and think it, there are even things I’m sort of glad you
didn’t have to be here to see (this year’s presidential election; the closing of El Famous in Vernon Hills—home of the football
sized burritos which you showed me after I tried to show you ‘how great Chipotle
is’). All this too thrown into the seemingly
endless current of small stuff.
But even among all the fleeting
small stuff, I’m endlessly grateful that I got to spend 18 years of my life
with you as my father. We disagreed and we bickered way too much, but I realize
now that it doesn’t change a thing. Despite the nose piercing, my occasional
penchants for rap music, and withstanding vegetarianism—all of which we
vehemently disagreed about—I inherited many of my core values and ideologies from
you (and you+mom, of course, but she knows this). You valued humor in nearly
all situations, even occasionally risking the inappropriate for the sake of
raucous laughter because, Lord knows, we all need it. You put family first, and
you taught me that even without a blood relation, some friends are family and
need to be treasured as such. You taught me to keep the faith in the worst of
situations (don’t sweat that small stuff, eh?). You showed me the importance of
helping anyone who needed it however you could, no matter how little you had or
how hard it could be. I fail at all of this regularly, but I strive to hold on
to these things and much more that you taught me. There are so many things that
I wish you could have taught me or that we could at least talk about, but as I
think about it—these are so major and among the most important after all (I
guess I’ll have to forgive you for the never teaching me how to buy a car or
writing down your spaghetti sauce recipe… bah!).
So here’s to you Dad, the
greatest man I’ve ever known, two years since I last saw you. I thank God for
you. I haven’t forgotten about you, at all, I think about you every day. I know
Heaven’s great; I can’t wait to see you there some day. Still, meanwhile, we miss you here on earth.
Love always,
Linda
 |
| circa 2011, holy smokes |
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