Why does this day have to be so hard anyway? 364 other days in the year that he is also gone, and never coming back. What does it matter that it was this day he left forever? I don't understand that. It's like the echo of grief, of the death howls from that day two years ago that resound through time and space and catch up with me, making me feel what, on most days, I am able to acknowledge but flee from rather quickly. No such luck today. No such luck last year either, even though I had intentionally tried to escape by vacationing in Mexico with a throng of friends. But it hit me there, too. There is no escape. Valentine's Day is, and will always be, the day my Dad died.
It was such a fucking horrible day, and the weeks and months that followed... ugh. I think that hurts more than plain old missing him. I don't like to remember the whole sequence of events. I loathe thinking of what transpired almost immediately after he passed. Such ugliness, still unresolved, and may also forever remain that way. He left, and with him went life as we knew it. Forever changed by his absence, as well as by the crimes committed against each other. We will never be the same.
Not that "being the same" is all it's cracked up to be anyway. I am far from the same person I was when he was alive. You imagine these things when someone dies: "What will it be like a year from now? Two years? Five?" I never would have imagined, or dreamed it even possible, that two years later I would be able to say "I'm happier than I've ever been." And yet, I am. Most truly. My mind spins thinking of all the sadness and loss and pain and struggle of these last two years... so then, to have been even more blessed, that I am able to feel such joy and gratitude... how else could that have happened without such a grand angel watching over me?
Angel, that makes me laugh. I picture him with some faerie wings strapped to him, like a costume I would have begged him to try on, with that look of pained disgust mixed with a hidden smile at my delight and laughter. I remember that look. I keep all his looks close at hand, or in mind, as it were. The crinkles in his neck. The twinkle in his eye. And his smell is still sealed up in that bag I haven't emptied yet in these two years. His bag from the trip. What he had packed for that weekend, all of it still there. I open it from time to time, thumbing through, bending my head low to inhale deeeep.... yep. I'd know that smell anywhere.
It does, indeed, feel like the echo of that day and time two years ago. I can't listen to any music today. The silence is thick. I am not hungry, but finally forced myself to eat. I want to curl up into bed, and shut the world out for the whole day and night, and possibly into next week... but there is business to tend to, and so I'm paying bills and jotting down my to-do's for the week, just as I did then. I don't feel that I avoid my grief so much. I allow it into my days when it comes requesting my audience. I cry. I talk about him. I talk to him. Shake my fist at the sky and tell him, "You're in big trouble when I see you again," half-joking, half-sincere.
He knows better. He knows me. He knows my bark is bigger than my bite. He knows that my skin is much thinner than I let on. He knows my popcorn goes in the special bowl. He knows I am never running from the problems, but running towards the solution. He knows that under my sharp words lies a very good heart. He knows sometimes I just need someone else to bear my weight.
There were things he knew about me that I didn't know myself. Though I can't ask him to tell me, he finds a way. I have come to learn and understand many things about myself since he's been gone. Things he had even told me once, but I didn't see it then. Resented him thinking he knew me better than I knew myself. But he did. He saw in me a better person than I ever saw. He had faith in my abilities and talents. Courageous, strong, fearless... I heard him describe me in these terms many times, and I thought he must have been drunk. But he wasn't (lol... I think). He was my Dad. He made me. He inspired me. He modeled good life to me. He believed in me.
Now, when Valentine's hits, and in my solitude I am awash in the Sea of Memory, I search for land to grab onto again. As I pull myself onto shore, I am met by the blooming Bleeding Hearts he always planted in my honor.
St. Valentine's Day. The day of hearts. He died from his. And mine bleeds for him forever.
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