"why is the measure of love loss?"--jeanette winterson
it is his birthday today, and i am waiting for this sharp pain to spread out from the edges and dull like a bruise. i have tried all the saccharine-laced aphorisms like "god works in mysterious ways", "you never get more of a burden than you can handle", and my personal favorite, "it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all".
horseshit.
the truth is, i don't care how mysterious the ways are, i am left dumbly blinking and wondering how it could possibly be fair that the most important person in my world was ripped from it with no explanation.
the truth is, i have been burdened more than i have ever been able to handle.
the truth is, why are the choices loving and losing, or not loving at all? why couldn't there have been loving and keeping for a little longer? it isn't fair.
the truth is, cancer devoured him from the inside out until he was just a shadow in a hospital bed, and it hurts me everyday.
the truth is that i find it a strange coincidence that on the day he died, i was at a crappy job that i hated, and didn't get to say goodbye because i "needed the money", and twelve years later, i picked up an extra shift at a crappier job that i hate even more because i wanted to do anything to distract me. it is not a coincidence that both things make me really, really angry.
i sat on the floor and cried today...a horrible, guttural, animal noise and effort that gave me a headache and made my cats worry.
it has been fifteen...fifteen years and his absence is felt just as palpably as his hugs were before he died, and i would give anything, anything, anything to trade one feeling for the other.
i miss you, i miss you, i miss you...there are not words...
a fifteen hour drive from ohio to new hampshire started so early in the morning that, despite the fact that it was june, the grass still vibrated with chilly morning condensation. i was armed with a stack of cd's (dad was too), books that motion sickness would render unreadable, and the crabby-early-morning disposition that still graces my lovely face to this day
...every day.
we took turns with the stereo, dad pretending to understand the perpetually-menstrual-pseudo-angry-girl rock i misguidedly worshipped at age 17, and i pretended to loathe the dulcet tones of his selections. a little over half of the way there we stopped in new york to lunch and gulp down oxygen and rid ourselves of hours' worth of car cramps. we noticed in the corner of the window, a fly who had unwittingly stowed away for the trip. dad imagined what the fly would feel like being taken so far away from his "little fly family". he even did an imitation of the fly's forlorn and pleading search for its family...complete with a squeaky fly voice. i think he realized that moments when i was young enough to giggle at his jokes were running out quickly, and he wanted to punctuate this moment...to tell me that i had done quite enough growing up for THAT day.
my dad...i tell you...
it has been fifteen years.
and i would still give anythinganythingANYTHING to hear his voice again.
the song "hey, tonight" by creedence clearwater revival bathes me in the optimism i felt that day with the sun shining not altogether unpleasantly in our eyes, the serpentine road winding before and behind us, and the hum of radial tires that carried us both.
...no word of the day today.
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