Dear Dad,
As usual, I will start with the obligatory description of where I am, and, as usual, this will be both metaphorical and literal. This need stems from the fact that all people like to have a feeling of place, of grounding, even if it is simply the power of suggestion afforded by flimsy words. When I was young...hopelessly young, my friends and I would have these vacuous conversations about place and time, and the vastness of these ideas seemed to remove the very gravity holding us to the Earth. These days, even thinking about these conversations seems to pretentiously suck the oxygen out of the room. Am I getting too cynical to be an English teacher?
So here goes.
I'm sitting in the house you helped us buy, and the windows are uncharacteristically open for late July. So many of the noises that helped establish place when we were children still resonate outside the windows--crickets telegraphing relief that tonight is not so hot as last week, branches tattooing the rhythm of the coming Fall in their leaves, the occasional distant car sound reminding me that I am not the only soul awake right now. It is late. In fact, the anniversary of your passing (can't we come up with a less...celebratory term?) is over now. It's 1:18. You have been gone for 23 years now, and it occurs to me that we have had to do without you for longer than we were allowed to have you. There is always something that sounds so entitled and immature about the phrase "it's not fair", but there is so much about your absence that isn't fair that I feel no compunction about using it. Sometimes, I am able to call up one of the sweet, sweet memories of you and have it buoy my heart, and I can kid myself that even though the you-sized gap between what should be and what is hurts, it is a pain ever-present but manageable.
This is not one of those times.
Something about this night, this time, and I can barely breathe. I know I could wake my husband up and cry in his arms, and truth be told, he would be upset if he knew I was upset right now and didn't tell him, so let's keep this between us, eh? The amount of memory on this computer and space on this cloud are not nearly enough to fit all the things I want to tell you. I miss you. I am angry that you aren't here, but there is no place to direct that anger. It just roils around in my chest, feeling vaguely like heartburn. This anger alternates with feelings of vacancy and the absolute certainty that I have been cheated...that we have been cheated. I'm not talking about being cheated out of the father/daughter dance at our wedding (Nate promised he would fill in for you, and we know how that went) or not getting to see your face at my graduation or meeting your grandchildren. I'm talking about how the world was cheated out of getting to have you get old, older, and crabby; cheated out of the sternness of your face that is betrayed by the same kind, gentle eyes your own father had; cheated out of the comfort that comes from the feeling of rightness because you are around to assure the world that everything is going to be okay and that it is simply because you said so. Tomorrow (later today, actually), the sky will black-pink-yellow-blue its way into the day. your family will, at different moments of the day, wipe our eyes free of sleep and tears in order to resume our lives. Everything is going to be okay, but everything is not going to be right.
And tonight, right now, I am going to allow myself to be sad.
I miss you.
I miss you.
I miss you.
