So last month I was dwelling on the empty spot in my life, and I was dwelling on it a lot. And I still kind of am, I suppose, but in a different way. I guess I keep thinking about things I'm being forced to figure out that usually would be figured out for me at the end of a phone call. What do I do when I jumpstart the car and there's white smoke coming out of the hood? What do I do when the power goes out and I can't remember the electric company's number? What do I do if I'm trying to find a specific piece of paper and the only person that would know how to find it is permanently inaccessible?
It all starts with a remote, you see. Dad liked to lose things, and he had a real penchant for misplacing the remote control. It would drop on the floor, he'd carry it to the kitchen and forget, it would sink into the depths of his chair - that kind of thing. And recently, I haven't for the life of me been able to find the remote to the Blu-ray player. I want to watch Quantum of Solace, and I want to watch The Holiday, and I want to have a good cry over my newest addition to the movie family - Where the Wild Things Are. But I can't do that without this stupid remote. I've literally asked my father out loud where it is, and subsequently called him a prick for hiding it.
This is what happens when you're the only person in the house and it's seven months later - and when it's seven weeks into your other parent's trip out of the state. You talk to cats, you talk to thin air, you ask your deceased father if he was the asshole that unplugged the computer again. Of course it wasn't him - you did it, and you know it - but it's a meaningless and easy way to pretend that this person is still in your life.
Or, even better, you start searching for signs. "Give me a sign that you're still around." "Give me a sign that you're okay." "Give me a sign that you're looking out for me." Give me a sign, give me a sign, give me a sign. It's the Jethro Tull song that plays on the radio right before you park the car. It's the father with his little kid that come over to your cart for a food sample when you're working. It's the old man with a smile so impeccably close to the one you saw for twenty-one years that it's like seeing a ghost. It's the movie that is on when you switch on the DirecTV.
If you had told me two years ago, at the beginning of my father's struggle with cancer, that I would be this stupidly hopeless and searching for signs all the time, I would have laughed at you. Even when the last good chemotherapy treatment had been used up and Dad was losing the things that made him Dad, I was sitting there and telling him that I didn't know what I would do without him. I was thinking about things far in the future, thinking that if he could just make it to this one thing, then I would be happy. I would be okay.
Hindsight, as always, is a real kick in the pants. It makes you realize that denial and vain hope are the stupidest things in the world - especially when you're dealing with someone that has Stage IV bladder cancer and there is no Stage V. It's like that for a reason. I think my father spend that entire eighteen months of treatment reminding us that there would be no magic pill.
He also spent that time re-teaching me how to appreciate the little things in life. Whether it was one of his catchphrases - "What the fuck, over" or "I can hear Jimi! Can you hear Jimi?" or "I've had just about all the fun I can stand" - or one of his favorite songs, or a movie, or just a hug, Dad knew how to really appreciate it. I can still remember him telling me that he'd like it if I gave him hugs more often. Just a good hug when I passed by his chair. I can still remember staying up late to watch wrestling matches and then ending up getting just as into it as he did.
It turns out that when you lose someone, you spend a long time mourning their absence in your life. You want their love, their advice, their voice, their hug, their smile. I can tell you right now that I would give anything in the world to be able to hug my father again, just once, or hear him call me Princess one more time, and I don't think there are words for the pain of knowing it will never happen again. There are no words for what it's like to have dreams about all of these things at night and then wake up in reality. Mourning the loss of someone close in your life is like mourning the loss of a part of yourself. Part of my soul stopped breathing when my father did. The ache runs deep.
But amidst all of that, you learn how not to mourn the memories. At first, you cry when you remember the time you got a compliment from this person, and you end up crying more because you're petrified you'll forget it. But the comforting part of this, for me, is that eventually you figure out how to smile. You can think back on the twenty years of memories and realize exactly how lucky you were, and how you had the best parents that you could ask for. You can be happy that you gave your parents hell but at the end of the day you were daddy's princess.
I miss my father, dearly. I don't know how I've gotten through seven months without him, and I don't have a clue how I'm going to survive the years ahead. I heard a line in a movie once, something along the lines of, "a daughter will always need her daddy," and there is more truth to that than you can believe.
I find myself painfully jealous of the daughters whose fathers are still here.
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