Sunday, April 27th, 2008, 2.50 PM
"Are you with Mr. O'Day?" asks doctor as he steps into the waiting room.
"Yes, I'm his daughter," I respond.
"I'm Dr. Shepherd, I specialize in cardiology and blah blah blah blah had a heart attack blah blah blah blah blah."
All I could think was, "get to the point already."
Guess what the point was.
"I'm sorry to tell you, but your father has died."
Hm.
I hate permanence.
I haaaaaate cliches, sympathies, those comforts people offer in an awkward plight.
I also hate unanswered questions.
What a bad situation to find myself in, huh?
The fact that death is so permanent makes me completely incompatible with it and its principles.
The permanence was instantaneous. "He'll never see me turn 18," I thought in a panic. "He'll never see me graduate, never help me move into my dorm or walk me down the aisle or see his grandchildren."
Never. What an ugly word.
The cliches were nearly instantaneous, too. "Of course he'll see all that!" the grief counselor counseled. "He's always in your heart, wherever you go. He's watching you all the time from heaven!"
She obviously didn't know my dad. My dad's in hell, playing cards, eating a meatball sub and asking why everyone always complains about the heat.
It's the unanswered questions that get me. I've spent countless hours over the past year, contemplating the possible scenarios and how different life would've been if dad were here, living and breathing and blinking and walking and using the bathroom and eating badly and being my dad.
It leads me to marvel at the resiliency of human spirit. How, I wonder, can a girl take such a long journey from the day she finds out her father is dead three weeks shy of his 50th birthday, to the one year anniversary of his death, wasting time on a blog when she should be filling out housing forms for college? I'm not so naive or audacious to suggest it's been a breeze and I'm taking this all in stride; quite the opposite, actually. I've written and rewritten this so many times simply because there are so many ways to tell it. I've cried in secret more times than I care to count. I've been to rock bottom and absolutely hated myself, regretted the decisions I made and actions I took against my dad. And I've come back.
I've chosen this forum for a few reasons. First, it's easy, and I'm comfortable with it. Second, I want people to understand what happened without having to verbally explain, because frankly, that gives me a headache. Lastly, and most importantly, I wanted to honor my dad. I love him. I want him back, and I'd do anything to make that happen. There are days when I forget he's dead and buried; when I end up remembering, I feel like somebody literally tore a hole in my chest and took the most essential organ, my heart (how ironic that it was his heart that led my dad to an early grave), with them. There are days when I uncover some forgotten memory of him, or hear another funny story about him; those days are painful, but certainly not unbearable.
I'm not looking for pity or sympathy or religious wisdom. I'm just trying to
I'm not sure what I'm trying to do, actually.
I suppose I'm trying to tell my family I love and appreciate all they've done, and all they continue to do.
I'm trying to reach my dad in some supernatural internetty kinda way, to let him know I love and miss him every minute of every hour.
I'm trying to move on with my life.
But I'm not trying to forget him. I'm actually trying to remember.
I'm trying. And that's all I can expect of myself, for now.
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