The Day After

For some reason, today is worse.  Yesterday I felt like I was in a fog – not sure what to do with myself, on the verge of tears but also kind of numb. Today I’m sad. I’m just sad, and I think it’s because of what could have been and what was. Yesterday, I could have seen my Dad for his birthday and we could have had that lunch conversation on the phone that we had every time – he’d ask where I would want to go, I’d say I don’t know, he’d laugh…what I would GIVE to have another one of those. And even if he had still been in rehab, I would have taken part of the day off to go see him and maybe have lunch or dinner together.  There’s so much I didn’t get to do.  I didn’t get to say so many things and he didn’t get to do so many things.  I miss him in a way that is different than how I miss my Mom; I miss my Mom for my daughter but my Dad I miss for myself.  He was the one I could always go to no matter what and he would listen, he would have answers, he would call to check on me – just because he wanted to.  He knew I could take care of myself, but he still wanted to do some of that, too.  I had a dream this morning that was strange but I guess I know what it means to my brain….Rob and I were at a Home Depot; we were going somewhere and for some reason stopped there.  I was holding things in my hands, talking to Rob and I turned around and he was gone – he just up and disappeared into the store.  Well there was my Dad, on line at customer service. He was walking without a cane, with his pants hiked up and his shirt tucked in – LOL – and he looked at me and said something like “oh hi Michele” and he took something out of the hands of an employee, said “thank you” to the man and turned to go to the counter.  I don’t remember anything else.  But remembering his face and his smile just makes me cry, I miss his face and his smile so much.

And yesterday, I think two people asked how I was – just two.  My best friend called to check on me and to tell me she prayed for my Dad that day and put him into the prayer book at church; I can always depend on her for support, prayers, laughs.  My own boyfriend didn’t ask.  When he came home I was emptying the dishwasher with the kitchen light off, he came sweeping in and turned on the very bright overhead light to which I said “please turn it off” and that apparently was enough to annoy him because I didn’t get a kiss hello – I suppose he was coming in to kiss me when I asked for the light to be turned off – and he barely spoke to me all night.  I know that he’s under a lot of stress and pressure this week at work so it’s not like I was angry that he didn’t text me during the day to check on me; I understood that he probably didn’t even think of it. But all night, nothing.  Again.  He did the same when it was my Mom and I thought that after going through that he would know how I would like to be treated.  Guess I have to have that conversation with him again – we’ve been through this at least three or four times in the past year.

I’m just sad today.  I want to go to the cemetery and cry; I’m pretty sure his name is up by now and I just want to go and cry.  Cry my eyes out until I can’t cry anymore because that’s just how I am right now and I was this way when it was just my Mom. Sometimes, I need to cry until my eyes ache and then I feel better; I don’t feel healed or like dancing in the streets, but I feel better.  Instead, I’m at my desk this morning because I have things to do that, I guess in some aspect of my life are more important than taking care of my own emotional health today.  I frequently put myself on the backburner which is one of the reasons why yesterday hurt so much; I do this to myself, I don’t put myself ahead of others but it would be so very nice if someone else did.

Missing Him for his Birthday

Tomorrow would have been my Dad’s 82^nd birthday.  A Tuesday; that would have meant no dialysis for him so we could have had lunch.  But I can’t have lunch with him and I am at a loss as to what to do with myself.  I am supposed to be here at work but really, I don’t know how productive I’m going to be knowing I could be taking him to lunch, calling him in the morning to wish him a happy birthday, fighting with him over who is paying the check for lunch.  If things had been different, tomorrow would be different. But it wasn’t different so tomorrow, I don’t know, tomorrow will just be another Tuesday and I will be expected to just do what I do on every other Tuesday.  I keep trying to tell myself that this is how it was supposed to go – his time was up.  But my brain, and my heart don’t care. I miss my Dad.  I miss the phone calls, the visits, the lunches and I wish I could have just one more – one more tomorrow, to celebrate him.  I still don’t totally understand what happened, as much as I know why it happened; the chances of survival after a surgery like that last one were slim but still.  He had survived so much, why not this one?  Why did this have to be the one that took him out?  Sucks.  It sucks that I have that memory to hold onto; the one of him lying there, unresponsive, on a ventilator that did not keep him alive and I did not get to say good-bye.  I didn’t even kiss him good-bye when I left that night because I figured I didn’t want to bother him, wake him, and I would see him the next day anyway. 

So today, I will do my best to not cry like I did yesterday when I was at his house cleaning up.  I don’t know how my sister did it; she put almost all of my mother’s clothes in bags so yesterday I took a bunch of my Dad’s stuff that was still around in bags and all I did was cry. I found the “Grandpa, Established 2012” t-shirt I had bought for him and I clutched it as if it was the last piece of bread after the apocalypse; I just cried.  He should still be here, wearing that shirt.  I shouldn’t be here, putting his things in bags for someone else to wear one day.  I know that donating everything is the right thing to do and he would want us to do that – but still.  Knowing that doesn’t make it easier.  All that it does is confirm that he’s gone. Walking around the house and seeing it slowly become empty just makes me sad. Although it was never my home, it was theirs and one day it will be empty and it will become someone else’s home and I don’t know where I’ll go after that day.  If I want to see his stuff, I go to the house. But once those keys are handed over, and all of the clothes are donated and the things we are keeping are in boxes, it will be over and I will just keep on with my life without either of them.  I know that this is how it’s supposed to be – the parents die before their children – but again, it doesn’t make it any easier.  I miss my Dad.  I just really miss him.

Honesty

This morning on the way to school, Emily asked me who bought her bike – she was supposed to ride it today in a trike-a-thon fundraiser but it rained (she still had questions about the bike though!).  So I told her that Grandpa bought it (my Dad).  So then she started asking how he was – “how my Grandpa doing, he sick Momma”.  Well, I bit the bullet and we started the conversation I have been putting off for over a month now.  I told her that he was old and sick, and that our hearts are like batteries and when you’re old and sick, they stop working just like batteries.  So Grandpa isn’t with us anymore because his battery stopped working, but he’s in heaven now and we can talk to him whenever we want.  Of course, next came “what is heaven”, which I tried to explain as best I could. And then came what I didn’t expect and I don’t know that I’ve heard before – “I love my Grandpa”.  Yeah, I started crying like a baby and I struggled to get out “I love Grandpa too, and we will always love him and he will always love us”.

I know that this is the first of what will most likely be many conversations about Grandpa and where he is and why we can’t see or talk to him.  But she needed to know and I wanted to be the one that told her.  I still have rather vivid memories of my Grandmother dying; I was almost 5 years old and my aunt told my parents to  not tell me because I wouldn’t understand.  But I was still brought to the wake, where I sat in a separate room alone during a prayer service. I snuck a peek into the room and I saw my Grandmother lying there and I was so confused!  Why is Grandma sleeping in that room with everyone???  And the next day we went to church, where I watched my parents walk down the aisle after a big brown box – what the heck???  And then the cemetery, where I was given a rose to put on the casket and for some reason that’s when it hit me that she was dead. She wasn’t sleeping; that was why everyone was so sad. Grandma had died and I had figured it out on my own. I cried and cried; I cried myself to sleep in the backseat of my cousin Rick’s white car, on the shoulder of his then girlfriend. I didn’t want anything like that to happen with my daughter; I never want her to say that I didn’t tell her because that wasn’t fair to do to me and I won’t do it to her.  I always want to be honest with her, no matter how much it may hurt me to do it.

One Month

One month today, May 30^th, I lost my Dad.  One month ago I got a phone call that I wish had never come; I still find it hard to believe that a doctor asked me if I wanted them to continue ‘life saving measures’ on my father as I stood in my kitchen forty minutes away.  One month ago right now, I was on my way to the hospital to sit with him – which I don’t know if he knew I had done for the few days following that day.  I hope he knew I was there.  One month ago, I thought and said out loud to the universe “if he has to go, take him now and stop his suffering but I don’t want to lose him so if there is any way we can keep him for a while I would appreciate that” but it wasn’t meant to be, for whatever reason.  I know that things happen for a reason and, as a number of people have said, my Dad wasn’t happy anymore.  He had lost his wife, he was alone in the house for the first time in over 50 years, and then he lost his best friend and I think that was the last straw on top of a heap of health issues that kept landing him in the hospital and this final time, he was done.  He was just done and it didn’t matter that he had a granddaughter that loves him, that needed to see him again, that needed him to come over one last time to see her.  It didn’t matter that I wanted him here for a countless number of reasons; all of those reasons are about me and my daughter, not about what was apparently right for him.  I know that he is happy where he is and he’s okay – there’s no way my Dad went anywhere but to a very happy, wonderful place. He was a good man, treated everyone well, and he deserved nothing short of paradise after this life was over. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still wish he was here; I wish it so very much.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think “man this sucks”.  Today is definitely a “man this sucks” day.

Remembering standing in that room, seeing what they had done and were doing to and with my Dad to try to keep him alive….it breaks my heart.  I wish he had crashed when we were there; at least we could have prevented some of what they had done and he could have just gone peacefully and quickly – which is what ended up happening in the end.  My Mom was different, she didn’t want to go.  He did.  He didn’t want to do this anymore and he left us when I guess, to him, was a good time.  He waited until we were both gone, I guess he wanted to spare us some sort of pain – yeah the phone call was worse than if we had been there, I think.  But still.  I hate that he died in that room alone, without us there.  My Dad never leaned on anyone for help; he hated that we took days off from work to take him to doctor appointments, or to come to the hospital to visit or to talk to doctors.  He didn’t want anyone to be inconvenienced (wonder where I get that from?).  So once we were gone, he let go and left us.  I wish he had held on, I wish that he felt he had something to hold on for – regardless of how much pain he was in, or how much work he would have had ahead of him to get better, I wish he had wanted to stay. But I know that he didn’t and a part of me will always wonder why we weren’t enough for him to want to hold on, to want to fight; I know that’s a question I will never be able to answer and I hope I can let go of it.  I hope to see him again one day, and I wait every day for a sign that he’s here and I hope to see that soon. I miss him.  I really, really just miss him.

And now, he's gone.

He’s just gone and I can feel it now.  I’m not sure what flipped the switch but now, as I sit at my desk reading the note that I got back from the Grand Knight of the Knights chapter in Somerset, I feel it.  He’s just gone now, and things will never really ever be the same again. It feels different than when it was my Mom; I guess because with my Dad, I know he’s in a better place and I know he is happy there.  I still don’t know what my mother is doing, where she is, if she’s happy – she was never really happy so who knows if she is now.  I miss his laugh the most, I think.  He had this great laugh and a great smile, too; it was hard to see the smile sometimes though because of the bushy goatee he wore (my mother hated that thing).  There are many things that I miss about him but I think that’s the thing I miss the most.  He was a funny guy, and not everyone knew that.  A lot of people saw him as being pretty serious and all business, because in many settings that how he was.  But with us, or with his friends, he had a great sense of humor and it always caught me off-guard because he was pretty reserved overall and when he came out with something totally off the cuff it would make you laugh until you cry.  I miss that.

I know that I am not alone in my grief and my sense of loss.  My Dad was a great guy and so many people are missing him now.  But for me, it’s different. He was always there, even when my Mom wasn’t – or she was too drunk to really be ‘there’ for anyone; I have far too many memories of being a child left alone to fix dinner, getting myself ready to walk to the school bus alone, watching her stumble around unable to balance herself even when she stood still.  Growing up in the chaos that was my house, he was my only constant.  I knew when he would be there and when he wouldn’t be, and I knew what I would get when he was there. Sure, back then I didn’t get much that wasn’t grumpy but still I knew what it was and it was okay for the most part.  As he got older and life changed, he changed and he wasn’t as grumpy anymore.  And then, he was again as he got sicker and older and he was alone.  And I understand that now, too.  But he was my constant, my supporter through the good and the oh so very bad.  When my mother said I was ruining my life by getting divorced and I stopped speaking to her, he was the one that told her to mind her own business and that I needed to be happy, even if that meant I got divorced.  He offered me a ridiculous amount of money to help me buy a house before my daughter was born; that money is still sitting in a bank account.  He never reinvested it, he was holding it until we were ready and then it would be mine to use.  He was always just there, a phone call away for anything I needed.  And now, he’s not.  And that is just weird. He has always been there. My phone won’t ring anymore with him asking how I am, how’s Emily doing, asking if I’m free for lunch, asking if we’re around this weekend so he can come up to see her.  It’s gone now and all that’s left are the memories, which I cherish and always will. 

I need a cookie. Or fifty of them....

I received two letters in the mail.  The first I actually got at work – it was sent to my office by the Knights of Columbus council in Somerset that my Dad had belonged to and was a charter member of.  My office had collected some money to donate to them in his name after he passed away and this letter was acknowledging that donation.  But it also said something else.   They created a fund in my Dad’s name, which will house any money that is donated to them in his name, and any distributions to charitable organizations will be done in his honor.  The first time I read it, my boss was sitting on the other side of my desk and I did my best to hide my tears.  24 hours later I am still in awe that they have done this for him and for his memory.  That was the first letter that made me cry; I cried every time I read it yesterday.

The second letter came to my home from the church in Somerset.  They refunded the money we paid for the organist and cantor; the pastor basically said they wouldn’t take our money.  The woman that wrote the letter, a nun, had been the principle at the school at the time that they built an expansion onto the building. My Dad was a part of that building committee and was involved in creating and approving the plans; the principal was also on that committee and she commented on the fond memories she had of him from that time.  She went on to say other things, wonderful things, that I couldn’t read because of the tears in my eyes.  I cried every time I tried to read it yesterday; I’ll try again when I get home today.

And here I sit today, revoking the words I wrote before those letters arrived.  Yesterday, I cried a lot. I even cried when Rob read the letters; he read them because I couldn’t tell him what they said.  As I tried to, I started to cry; and when he started to talk about how wonderful my Dad was and what an impact he made on his community, I cried more.  What makes me cry the most often are the words of others about my Dad.  I knew he meant a lot to people and that people appreciated him but to hear the words or to read them, or to see that a fund has been created in his name, just brings it home as being real.  I know that a lot of people are sad now that he is gone; I know that my sorrow is shared by more people that I probably even realize.  He was loved and appreciated so very much and now, he is missed just as much.  And that makes me sad, too.  To know that so many people miss him, so many people are sad now.  I know that he was sick and tired, and tired of being sick, and I am sure that it was just  his time – there was such a risk with the last surgery that this, I think, was the inevitable outcome.  He had been through so much over the past few years that his heart was just done and I think his soul was just done and he let go, he stopped fighting – which I know I will accept one day. But still.  I had wanted him around for at least another year so that I knew for sure my daughter would remember him and so he would know that she got into a good school and she was going to have a good, happy, successful life in a nice home. And even though, on that day as I left my house to go see him at the hospital, I said to the universe or to God “if he’s going to go, please just take him today and stop his suffering because this isn’t fair”, I still wasn’t ready for him to leave us just yet.  I had wanted him around for so much more and I know that a lot of other people feel the same way.  I laugh but it’s true; he’s turned into ‘the man, the myth, the legend’.  And I’m okay with that.  He was great, and he is missed.

Father's Day

I think everyone expected me to fall apart yesterday, but I didn’t.  Yes, it was Father’s Day.  It was the first one without my Dad, and it was just three weeks after he passed.  I think Saturday, the three week mark, was harder. We were in the car when 7:32 struck; that was the first time he coded three weeks ago.  And again at around 7:45 or 7:50, when I got the call.  That is harder. Father’s Day was, numbing.  I didn’t feel much of anything, which is kind of how I feel most days lately and I don’t know why.  I don’t know if this is my brain protecting me from the utter pain and sorrow I would be in if I was allowed to feel it; I don’t know if I just can’t feel any more than I already have – which I think may be the real deal.  Whenever I do think about it, the word that crosses my mind the most is just “f*ck”.  As it was the day that we walked into his room, well the day that I sprinted to his room from the elevator and that’s all I kept saying over and over.  That’s all I can keep saying.  Do I cry?  Of course I do. Every time I have to go to the house and see his car still sitting there, I’m reminded that he’s gone.  Every time I walk through the door, using my own key, I am very well aware of the fact that he is gone.  They both are.

Yesterday was not my worst day, and I am sure that I will have plenty that will be harder.  The day my daughter is accepted into school, the first day of school, the day we move into a house, or hell even looking at houses will be hard; I had planned on bringing him with us, have him look at the electrical and the plumbing and help to negotiate a price for it like he has for every car I’ve bought.  The day I have to put tires on my car, I will probably cry just because I always asked him what I should buy.  Stupid stuff that really, isn’t about him but I wanted him to be there for.  I knew he wouldn’t be there for my daughter’s high school graduation, but I had hoped he would be there for the first Grandparent’s Day at school – but he won’t be.  My brain is just saying “f*ck” and “ugh this sucks” over and over and over and I don’t feel much of anything at all.

My Dad was a great man.  As one of my friends said “he was one of the best Padres I ever knew”, and it’s true.  Sure he was tough, sure he was absent for reasons that I now understand.  He drove us to the mall more times than I can count; he saved me from the roadside more times than I can count, and at all hours of the day and night.  And when the chips fell, he was there.  When I needed him, he was there.  He picked up the phone and called me, he offered to bring me soup every single time I was sick, he offered to watch my daughter time and time again even when he didn’t have to, he was always just there to fall back to whenever I needed to. And now, it sucks that he’s gone and I just feel different.  Maybe that’s why  I’m not crying – it’s because I’m just not the same anymore; I don’t know how to feel, I don’t know how to cry because I just don’t feel the same way I did before he died.  It’s hard to cry when the feelings just aren’t there; the emptiness I feel this time around is bigger than I can ever put into words.