august fourth

I’ve never written about this.

And not because I don’t love you enough to expose my every secret, but because this isn’t really a secret.  It’s just something I buried.  In the back of my mind.

But recent events have driven it forward and here I go word-vomiting in the last place I expected.  Not because I don’t want you to know, but because I just don’t talk about this.  It’s not me.

Until today.

Eleven years ago today my dad passed away very suddenly.  And it’s still all too real to me.

I was just your typical gangly-teenager, perched in my lifeguard chair humming along to Matchbox 20’s latest hit, when my older brother came over with a funny look on his face and told me to get down.  We needed to go to the hospital.

I don’t remember the next ten minutes.  I just know I didn't wear my seat belt on the ride there.  Which is odd for the 'click it or I'll slap you' mentality that I embrace.  Strange moments make you do strange things.  I must have spent those ten minutes thinking it was nothing.  Just a scare.  This kind of stuff doesn't happen to real people.  People like me, right?

But it wasn’t just a scare.  At 4:02pm on August 4, 2000, my mom told my dad a joke and he had a heart attack while laughing at the punchline.

What a way to go.  Smiling and looking at the one you love.  I hope I'm that lucky when my time comes.

We had to sit in this tiny, white room in chairs, just staring at each other.  I don't know if the chairs or the silence were more uncomfortable.  I just remember it smelled like cheap cleaner and I couldn’t breathe through my nose.

The inevitable happened.  They did all they could, but with his heart history, it wasn't enough.  It stuns you.  The words don't seem real.

This doesn't happen to people like me, right?

I cried hysterically until I got home.  I cried until the smell of chlorine from our pool washed over me.  They say smell has the longest memory.  My childhood was built on chlorine.  It was like being in a safe haven, untouchable.  Like the last 38 minutes of my life didn't just happen.  

That was the last time I remember feeling relieved.  And the next few days became a blur of people's faces.  I took those days and filed them away…for good.  Because I didn’t believe it.  Because I didn’t want to believe it.  And because I was so angry at myself.  Only two hours earlier, I had been annoyed at my dad for something so ridiculous, I cannot even bring myself to tell you about it

It makes me sick to think about that day.  To think about what I should have said.  How I should of acted.  But life doesn't give you second chances, only firsts.
 
Some of us were talking the other day, about what would be left behind if they kicked the bucket.  And an underlying theme emerged from the conversation: I'd rather they have known me, then have no memory.

I'm lucky, in a way.  I knew my dad for 15 years, unlike some who lose their parents before their earliest memory.  I knew he always stood slightly slouched with his hands in pockets.  That he always tried to breathe while drinking milk causing all of us to burst into giggles at the dinner table.  That he snored like crazy.  And that his pockets were always full of jolly ranchers.

But I've lost some memories.  I can't remember his voice, no matter how hard I try.  Even in dreams, he doesn't speak.  But at least he's back for a little bit, in his shorts and green polo, hands in his pockets.

Those pockets were always full of jolly ranchers.

Like it or not, death is a part of life.  And a part that I really didn’t start dealing with.  Until about a year ago when I realized that I would give anything for my husband to have someone like my dad in his life, just like I have my FIL.

Life can hurt, but it goes on.

I probably won’t ever write about this again.  Because that’s not me.  This part of my life has shaped me in becoming who I am, but I won't let it define me.  It's still a struggle, it's still a loss, it's still an open wound that I haven't let heal.

So please, don't look on this sudden outburst as a cry for sympathy.  Rather, it's just the opposite.  I really just want you to go hug your dad and give him a jolly rancher.  It would make me beam with happiness knowing you did.  Really.  It would.