This was written - well, more like pecked out as a note on my itty bitty, old school iPhone 4 - on Father’s Day, 6/16/2013. I mentally checked out around 6pm and got lost until about 9pm. A huge thank you to my husband who, every year (but for some reason, in a really BIG way this year) has to share his Father's Day with the memories of my dad...and the funk the holiday puts me in.
I don't expect anyone to read any or all of it but it helped me to get it out and I think it will help me to keep getting it out...
I don't know why I feel the need to put it out to the world because it is so personally mine...but I do. Like, having it out of me and in a note on my iphone isn't enough...and saving a word document on my computer didn't feel like enough...putting it out there, me, parts of me I didn't know were hiding in there so disturbed all these years, putting it out there for the world to see and feel helps make it seem more real. It's not just a step in the grief process I told myself I've already completed...I can't lie to myself when it's out here. I can't deny it when it's here. Sure, I've previously posted about my dad, about his passing, about the pain...and a lot of it resembles parts of this.But this, the place I was when I wrote this, this really FELT different. Honest. Not that previously posted walks down memory lane weren't honest...I don't know...they were just masked in numbness, in denial...a little piece of pain being allowed to show but not THIS much.
...I'm rambling. Like my blog is subtitled..."random blabberings from a work in progress..."
So, I plan on using this blog however I need to, to random blabber about whatever I need to in an effort to make progress on resolving whatever ails me at the moment. Right now and for the next few weeks, I have a feeling that is going to be my dad.
So...this is me...on the 10th Father's Day without my dad, approaching the 11th anniversary of the moment my life would be forever changed...
-KD
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For the first time in a very long time, I allowed myself to remember. Not the 'recall and talk about a good memory of him while staying numb to the associated feelings' but the really deep, really pure, unfiltered memory. I tried to picture him standing in front of me, the way he smelled, the way he laughed, his funny faces and mannerisms, the many sayings he had...
I was going through a list on the other side of my mind of all the things I needed to tell him about from the last 11 years...
It was like I was imagining he had been out of town and out of communication for 11 years and we were sitting at the dining room table just catching up.
But, for the first time ever, I had a hard time picturing him. I dropped the curtain of numbness a little more to allow myself to feel more pain hoping that would help bring the image into focus and it didn't. I threw the curtain on the ground and begged for more clarity and just could get there. I tried to pull his image from one of the many photos of my life stored in my memory and place it in the moment and couldn't. I tried to smell him and couldn't. I tried to hear his laugh and feel his hug and hear him say one of his cheesy lines...and I was even drawing a blank on those.
It was then that I realized the defense mechanism I'd utilized the last 11 years to prevent the pain, to block the memories when the pain of the loss became real, to protect me from the reality, and allowed me to function all these years was allowing the memories to fade. By not ever honestly remembering them and reliving them and imagining him, I'd begun to forget him. Well, not HIM, but the details of him that I would need someday...like today.
And as I sit here now, typing this, I can't recall things about him that I used to. I can't remember things that I vowed to never ever forget...things I promised myself and our yet-to-be-born children (at the time) that I would be able to share at any moment, any of the 20 years of memories I had of him, for the rest of my life.
Just shy of 11 years and they're fading. I ignored them too long in an effort to protect myself in the short-term that I may have caused myself even more excruciating pain for the long-term. That is almost more painful than the loss itself...the loss I ignored, the loss I blocked, the loss I couldn't bring myself to accept...until it was too late.
I am hoping this is just a funk...a fog. Or maybe it is just an extension of my defense mechanism. I threw down the curtain of numbness in an effort to feel the pain, hoping to force the recollection of him...but maybe there is another one. Maybe the feeling I thought I was ready to feel, the most awful pain of loss I was feeling...maybe it wasn't the full extent of it. Maybe something inside me knew better than to go there...to REALLY go there...today, Father's Day, a day to celebrate my husband with our kids. But then I wonder if that something inside me will ever let me really, truly, honestly and completely feel the pain of the loss...allow me to finish (or start?) grieving...allow me to see him, hear him, feel him, smell him, remember him more than just in funny stories.
I remember almost every moment of the next few weeks of 2003. July 5th 2003 was the last time I saw my dad alive (and coherent). I swear he knew something wasn't right. He stood in Amalia's yard and waved at me until I was out of sight...like he knew that was the last goodbye. We watched a David Blaine (magician) movie earlier and he got to see Leila that day...thanks to the 3D ultrasound he paid for (the check later bounced and was returned to me several weeks later in the mail. Haha!) He had talked about a midnight panic attack he'd had Thursday night and said he'd made an appointment but they couldn't get him in for a few weeks. He promised me he'd go to the ER next time it happened!
He kept that promise...or rather, circumstances allowed for it.
July 7th 2003...7/703...two of the three lucky sevens (one of his favorite slit machines). I remember the phone call...my mom, he had collapsed at work...in his office, they did CPR and got him back and was at the hospital. I think she waited a while to call me, thinking I was in class. Or maybe I had slept through the call and called her back? I had ditched my morning class, interpersonal communications, to sleep.
I remember the speeding and weaving through traffic up the 15 freeway toward Fontana. I remember having to park far away...so far away it seemed. I remember wandering through the hospital toward the ER...seeing family...being redirected to the ICU, a doctor updating all of us on what had happened so far and what to expect next...they rushed him to surgery to relieve the swelling on his brain but he went into cardiac arrest again on the table and they brought him back...again. There was another time they resuscitated him too. They determined his heart was not strong enough to make it through the procedure and that the best we could do at that point was wait and hope the swelling in the brain went down on its own, and if it did he would probably be a vegetable (something we all knew he would never ever want), that his heart was only operating on 20% and much of his heart appeared to have been non-functioning for quite a while. Insert some foggy, blurred moments. I was repeatedly told I shouldn't have been in ICU as pregnant as I was (8 months), repeatedly asked by family and friends where my husband was (deployed to the Persian Gulf with the Navy), asked to sign all sorts of documents by hospital staff (I was next of kin; parents were divorced, brother was under 18), and sat in the ICU room for hours with my Uncle Jerry watching some numbers on one of the monitors and joking about how awesome it was to see my dad in tights (the blood flow sock things). I don't remember the details of very much else in between. I know i went home to get my kitties and take them to my moms...rushed to Park Hospital in Riverside and cussed out the records people who wouldn't send his files, that could potentially save him, to the ER doc...hit and killed a crow on my way there (a sign of death).
July 9th, 2003 the doctors declared him brain dead and all his friends from work came to say goodbye. The ICU rule of two guests per patient/room was ignored with a long line of people lining the hallway of ICU, out the door and down the hallway of the hospital...All to say goodbye. A priest was called. We were asked if we wanted to stay while they turned off and removed all the machines. My brother declined, I stayed. My uncle Jerry stayed too. And Amalia I think. There might have been more. They told us what to expect during the process - spasms, mouth/tongue moving, color fading, breathing stopping...
This is the part I have tried so hard to forget, to block, to make numb...with "tried" being the key word here. I can vividly picture the last few breaths he took and the color leaving his skin. I can picture the exact moment of permanent loss, when all hope was gone, when it was definite that he would not be coming out of this...but the pain is not excruciating. It's like I've completely disassociated those emotionally charged, extremely traumatic days and images from the memory that is my dad. I did what i had to do to survive it. I made it through...somehow!
"You have to be strong for that baby growing inside you, she needs you...your dad would want that"
"You have to be strong for your brother, he needs you...your dad would want that"
"You have to be strong for and by yourself, your husband needs you to until he can get home from halfway around the world...your dad would want that"
"Just stay strong...they all need you to not fall into a pool of tears...they can't worry about the health of you and the baby in he midst of all this...just stay strong for all of them...your dad would want that."
"You have to make the funeral arrangements, go to his work and sign some papers for his benefits, gather his personal belongings from his office...just stay strong...your baby needs you...you can do it...your dad would want that."
Go buy a black maternity dress for the funeral and don't fall into a pool of tears at the mall...that's not socially acceptable.
Pick songs for his funeral...songs I can no longer listen to without numbing myself.
Choose an urn/box for his ashes...
Choose his casket attire (closed casket but he was there)...Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts!
Funeral...
Shake everyone's hand at the funeral, accept hugs, smile and nod and say thank you to whatever condolences they're spewing, thank them for coming, assure them you'll be okay...you'll stay strong...for the baby, for my brother, for my family...
Pick up his ashes, ponder what to do with them...
Close his bank account...
Transfer his truck...
Clean out his truck...discover the last prescription he filled was 7 months earlier (he had always told Amalia he kept his pills in the truck and would go out every day to "take them"...liar!)
Get mad at him for doing this to all of us...for being so irresponsible...for not managing his high blood pressure...for thinking he was okay...for not taking his damn pills.
He would miss sooooo much all because he didn't take his pills! Really? All that trauma, pain stress...all of it that I wasn't allowed to feel (be strong for the baby!)...because he didn't take his pills?
The pain I should have been allowed to feel was replaced with anger. After all, nobody told me I couldn't be angry, right? That's one of the stages of grief, right?
Damn it. Damn him.
The doctor's appointment that might have discovered his failing heart, his blood clots...it was scheduled too late...ended up having his funeral on that day. Isn't it ironic, don't you think? (Thanks for that Alanis Morissette, that song now pisses me off!)
My children, Anthony's future children...they'll never know him. They'll never be able to hug him, hear his corny jokes and sayings, smell him...and because I'm having trouble remembering, I might not be able to share him with them. My brother, I expect, is just like me...numb. When you are not numb you either get mad or cry...but all of it hurts. So we stay numb. Ignorance is bliss...so ignore it.
Unfortunately, I still have moments where I think "oh, I should call my dad...he would love that!!" or see something and think what a perfect gift that would be for him...only to be reminded...again...I can't call him, I could get it but could never give it to him.
So, back to this morning...looking through pictures, putting together a photo collage to post to Facebook for Father's Day...the 10th one without him...and I stared at one of his pictures, I allowed myself to get lost in it, to imagine him...what I'd tell him...
And I couldn't.
So what happens now? What does that mean? No idea.
When you lose someone, you are told the usual clichés: "you'll always have your memories", "embrace all the years of wonderful memories", "you'll always remember them, you'll never forget them!", "it gets easier".
Really?
You'll always have your memories...unless you don't allow yourself to enjoy and relive/review them. They left off the last part.
If you we're to tell me a year ago that memories fade, I'd have called you a liar. You choose what memories fade (bad ones) and which ones remain...memories of my dad would never fade. Ever. I'd make sure of it.
But I didn't. I didn't chose to let them fade but by choosing a constant state of numbness, I didn't choose to make them stay either. So they're fading. Against my will.
I could choose to allow what is left of them to flood my senses and emotions and maybe recover some of the ones that were lost...and see him again, hear him again, feel his hugs, smell him. But that scares me. The pain of allowing that scares me.
But the pain of forgetting him definitely scares me more. So maybe I needed to get to this point of choosing my pain to realize the side effects and collateral damage caused by 11 years of numbness.
Accept that he's gone, let go of the numbness, allow the pain and feeling of real and permanent loss...and forever have my memories?
Or
Stay numb forever and rarely feel pain...but experience this most terrible feeling of pain when I need to remember and can't because I've ignored reality too long?
I want a lifetime of good memories I can recall after a period of allowing myself to grieve, not a lifetime in the clouds (denial) with frequent heartbreak when I can't recall the memory I need when I need it!
But maybe I don't have to choose...maybe I can ride the line in between?
Agh.
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