A Tribute

Tomorrow will be 4 years since my dad died. I want to memorialize him somehow, somewhere, so I thought I would do it here. Since tomorrow is going to be a day for looking forward with hope, I wanted to take a moment on the eve of his passing to look to the past.

My dad was so full of life that sometimes I cannot believe he is truly gone. It's one of those things that sneaks up on me and socks me in the gut when I am not expecting it. The past couple of months I have been weighed down, remembering 4 years ago, when I was waiting to see what the doctors would find, and then... just waiting. Six months or a year, they said. It was 3 weeks. Barely enough time to even digest how final that verdict was, and not even time to catch my breath. The heaviness that lay over me every day during that three weeks, talking to him on the phone about mundane things like TV shows, wondering if he would once again escape his fate by some miracle. I spent most of my life in fear that my dad would die - he had a kidney transplant in 1980 and beat cancer in 1991. Odds were that he had run out of chances, but part of me hoped anyway. Everything about this time of year reminds me of those days, the waiting, the dread... the tiny amount of hope that should not have been there, but still was.

And then the call that came on January 20th. I wish I had been there and yet I'm glad I wasn't. The trip home, the rituals that we had to go through... so morbid and yet so necessary. Speaking at his funeral - knowing he would have been so proud of me for doing so, for getting through it without cracking, and then breaking down afterwards when that thought occurred to me. Staying behind after everyone else, watching him be lowered into the ground, wondering how we could just leave him there, in the cold, alone. Remembering the conversations we had during those last days, and wishing somehow that I could have made more of them. We danced around the subject of his impending death. I think he was trying to shield me, or maybe he too was hoping that he would again beat the odds. Whatever the case, whenever the topic even remotely came up, he changed the subject. He broke down at one point - one of only two times he even alluded to his death - and said that children should know their grandparents. Every time Natalie hits a milestone or does something I know he would adore, that comment comes back to me. I like to think that somehow, some way, he has seen her, has been able to witness his amazing granddaughter. It's a comforting thought.

My dad wasn't perfect. We had our issues, we had our arguments, he had his demons that he fought... but he was my dad and I love him more than I think he ever knew. He taught me so much, and helped me become who I am today. I have spent the past couple of days playing the "what if" game, a luxury I don't usually allow myself. It's so easy to fall into the "If only he were here" or "What if they had caught the cancer sooner" or "Why did this have to happen?" trap. Imagining him playing with Natalie, still having our weekly Thursday afternoon phone calls, and oh the debates we would have had over this past election! I get sad and angry and immobilized with the devastation his loss brings. But then I realize that he was given two more chances than most people would have had. His life was saved by an organ donor 28 years ago, and he was able to be there for my childhood, drive me crazy with pushing me to be better at sports and school, the joy I saw on his face when he watched me play my flute, and the quiz team at church - so many great memories of time spent with my father doing the quiz team. I would have missed having a father if not for that transplant. And then, when he beat cancer 11 years later, that second (third!) chance at life made it so that we could fight our way through the next 10 years because we were so much alike and yet on opposite sides of every possible topic, and then in my late twenties, we became friends again. Best of all, he was there to give me away on my wedding day. I am so thankful for that, and even though my grief feels overwhelming sometimes, the joy is there underneath it all that I knew him, and that I have all my memories to carry with me.