“Gone. The saddest word in language. In any language.” Mark Slouka, God’s Fool My father is gone. Today, marks four years since that day when I witnessed the black hearse pull up to my childhood home. I watched as two men wheeled his body from my old room down the driveway into the vehicle. The door clanked shut. Gone. Three days ago, I almost picked up the phone, dialed my old phone number, and I wanted to say, the words, [...]
Fathers/Daughters
For the last few years, February and March are months wedged in sorrow. Next month will mark 4 years since my father’s passing. Thoughts of him sneak in as I buy a new pen, wrap a present, or write a check. This is not accidental. Each of these instances reflected a part of his personality. He loved office supplies, stockpiling an arsenal of legal pads, paperclips, and post-it notes in his work area. During birthdays, he volunteered to wrap presents, [...]
My daughter squeezed my hand tight. Did she know something that I didn’t feel yet? Although our fingers are interlaced and clasped together, my eyes are not fixated on her, but I am unable to remember, months later, what has captured my attention. Sometimes we learn in retrospect. This flicker of time happened on June 24, 2012, on the morning of my sister’s wedding. Studying the picture now I realize that my little girl’s eyes dart upward. Her gaze [...]
Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. – John Milton For the last several years, I’ve made it a point to not make any New Year’s resolutions. My reasoning centers around two different ideas. One, everyday we wake in the morning we are intersecting with new. It bothers me that there is this belief that change can only occur when the calendar moves [...]
Time doesn’t always make you forget. Sometimes you are placed in the middle of the place that you dread the most. You are unable to move forward, but instead hurl into a terrain where you feel the breadth of a sudden cold slap in your face. Oh, there is that feeling again, where you revisit the land where mortality intersects out of the walls like invisible laser lights and you try to duck under the lines only to be stranded [...]
During my childhood,birthdays were a reason to celebrate at my house. There was one ritual that always occurred. We bought a cake, gathered around our worn cherry dining table and sang “Happy Birthday” in our best choir voices. We took turns feeding the birthday star. Today that celebration is only a memory. It is my father’s birthday today. I find myself not knowing what to do or how to honor his birthday. Do I revisit past celebrations? Or do I [...]
Stop. I begged myself to stop, but the tears formed in the corners. I tried to lift my head up, with the hope that I could prevent the river from flowing down my cheeks. Stop. But I didn’t. Strong. Be strong. These are the words I repeated over and over, as I witnessed the marriage of my sister and her now husband. As her feet turned the corner after the fourth vow, I felt a foray into a beginning and [...]
When my friend’s car pulled up to my childhood home, I always cursed the tree in the yard because it blocked my view. Anytime I decided to look out my window, the green and brown leaves fell like a waterfall especially when the wind hit the branches. As I walked outside, a parade of browns, greens, and yellows made a messy pattern and if I stared at the leaves long enough I could create a picture of an abstract piece [...]
The expression on his face didn’t convey much. I knew he was tired of talking and more exhausted from living. My father, limp from the chemotherapy and radiation, laid on his hospital bed in the middle of my childhood room. At this point, his oncologist wanted to put a period on what he could do. In a quiet voice, he told us that measures needed to be taken to make his remaining days comfortable. As he said this, I wondered [...]
Three years ago I still remember. The air smelled of coffee that lingered too long, sandalwood, and of a vanilla Glade plug in. When I walked into my old room, my father laid in a hospital bed in the place where I spent most of my childhood. Within two seconds, my husband checked my father’s pulse and told me in three words, “He has passed.” I didn’t believe him. Screaming inside, my mind insisted that my father was still alive. [...]
