Today Can Bite My Bippy

Today is a bad dead parent day.   It feels like my family doesn’t exist without them today; I know that my family DOES in fact exist without them – but still.  With the holidays looming and the Thanksgiving decision over my head it all feels too much. I wish someone, anyone, would swoop in and make the decision for me but I know that won’t happen.  There is no one who is strong enough or able enough to do it.  Rob won’t do it; he has no idea what to say to me when it comes to the topic of my dead parents so he won’t step up and say “I think this is what we should do”.  Anytime my dead father comes up in conversation, he tends to change the topic as quickly as he can; even if he doesn’t admit it I know he misses him too.  He will, on the other hand, tell me what HE wants to do for the holidays; and I think that’s adding to my problem today.  Today, I feel like he doesn’t consider me to be a part of his family.  I’m his girlfriend, but not his family.  When he says things like he wants to spend a holiday with his family, and more than half of my family is dead, it makes me feel like he has his family and I have mine and the two are separate totally separate entities. Which just makes me feel more alone; when both of your parents are dead – and as I have found especially when it happens so close together – you feel abandoned, on some level.  It’s not like I’m 5 and they dropped me off at the laundromat and didn’t come back, but it isn’t all that different emotionally.  They left and they aren’t coming back. It doesn’t matter how old I am, I still feel abandoned and alone. At least I do today.

Today I miss them so very much. I miss my Mom’s insanity and lack of a filter (I still giggle and shake my head at some of the horrible things she said at my brother’s funeral).  I miss my Dad’s laugh and knowing that he was always just a phone call away if ever I needed anything.  I still remember the day after my car accident how he asked if I needed him to take me to get the rental car, or if I wanted him to go with me to clean out my wrecked car; he offered to come up and bring me dinner, I think, too.  He was a good guy and I was lucky – or blessed, as my uncle would say – to have him for as long as I did. But damn it what I would give for just a little bit longer with him, and with her too. Yeah she was crazy – bat shit crazy was how I used to refer to her – but she was my Mom and for all that she was and wasn’t, I loved her.  And I miss that insanity that made me laugh and I wonder what kind of grandmother she would be to this amazing, and crazy, little lady that I have the pleasure of raising.  Emily is such a different kid now, almost two years after my Mom left us and I wonder how they would interact and what my Mom would say to her when she says something nutty and I wonder what my Mom would say about some of the things she does or can do.  I wish I could hear it. I wish I could hear them both again.  I have voicemails, but it’s not the same.

I know that today is happening for a lot of reasons.  Hormones, holidays.  But overall, I think it’s just another one of those days which creeps up on me and smacks me in the head to remind me that yes – both of them are gone and my life will never be the same again. As if I could ever forget.

Sigh. I Miss Him.

I have no idea why I started to think about it – maybe it was the hearse that I passed on the way to school; but I was thinking about him before that.  I can’t stop thinking about my Dad this morning and all it’s doing is making me sad and making me want to curl up in bed with some snacks, some movies, and pretend that the world doesn’t exist.  But instead, I’m at my desk trying to focus on something other than the night my Dad died.

I keep thinking – no, rehashing – what happened that night in my head.  The phone call, how it felt to hear that the doctor wanted to talk to me and later fumbling with my pants and shoes and running out the door to try to get to him before it was too late.  Hearing the nurses say they lost his pulse, watching them do CPR on him – something no one should have to watch because that was way more traumatic then it appears to be on TV.  And telling them to stop.  Standing in the hallway outside of his room, telling my best friend that he was gone and hearing the silence, and then shock in his voice because he really didn’t think that was why I was calling him and no one expected my Dad to die.  And then seeing my Dad at the funeral home, in the casket and feeling like it just didn’t look like him – until I took a few steps back and saw his profile and sat in a chair, just looking at him and trying to be more aware of the fact that he was gone.  And now, feeling that he’s just gone.  He’s not here; as much as I want him to be and as much I try not to think about it, I don’t feel like he’s with us.  Maybe it’s too soon for him to be, or maybe he’s just too busy with everyone else that he’s now reunited with.  But he’s not here.  He was the good parent, the parent that I trusted and could rely on and now that he’s gone, it just feels……..empty.  I don’t feel empty, neither does my life; but something just does.  There’s this part of me that will never be the same; I was who I was before because of him (and my Mom, too) and now I’m someone else because they are both gone. I know that he didn’t want to be here anymore.  He was so tired and probably hated being alone – with my Mom and his best friend gone, he had no one left I guess.  And I understand that, at least as best as I can even on a day like today when I would give just about anything to hear his voice again. 

And as I sit here at my desk, in my office, at a job that I hoped made him proud, I fight back the tears as I remember sitting in his chair with him watching tv when I was a little kid.  A little kid who would cram themselves onto his lap to cuddle for even a little while; eventually I got too big and I got kicked off of that lap. But then I sat next to him and often leaned my head on his lap.  He was always my favorite and now, he’s just gone.  For whatever the reason, today is one of those days that I would give anything to see his smile again and to hear his voice and to sit in that chair with him again.  That old, ratty black leather chair that squeaked when it reclined and that we shared many nights watching whatever it was that he watched at that time; I remember him sitting there while I watched the Muppet Show on summer nights before bedtime, but I am pretty sure he didn’t watch that willingly. 

Today I am 40-something year old orphan, crying in her office, who really really misses her Dad.