Month: June 2016

It started with little squiggles on the wall. When I could finally, aptly hold a pen between my toddler fingers, I’d push it up against the paint and drag the tip across. With no intent or real understanding for what it meant at that young age, I would write – on the wall. It drove my mother nuts.

As I got older, squiggles turned into words, and later poems and stories in a number of journals. So much so, that I’d wake at all hours of the night and hop excitedly out of bed to kneel against my nightstand under the lamp, and scribble away. I’d try hard to keep quiet and shut the door so the light filling my room wouldn’t wake my parents, but crouching there I’d always here the moan of the floor outside of my bedroom as mom or dad peered in to check on me – wondering what had me up at 3:00 am.

You could say, writing has always been a part of me.

So often it’s the best way, if not the only way, to give my dizzy feelings some relief. To make sense of all I think. Watching those words scrawl across a blank page as my hand races to keep up is incredibly calming.

So it was no surprise that I turned to my journals again in this last year – almost to the day. It had been just over a month after losing dad, that I first flopped across my bed and reached for my pen. June 17th, 2015. And for more nights since than not, I’ve done it over and over again. It’s given me a safe, often ugly yet forgiving, place to cry and scream and wonder without feeling silly, or hopeless, and to maybe say things I couldn’t say out loud. It’s given me perspective on things I barely knew I was feeling. It’s been life changing, and saving, truly.

This week, when I turned on my nightstand lamp, ready to write again – I flipped back to that first entry. I got lost in reading words that bore from a different time, but were dangerously familiar. It made me grateful.

Sometimes, in the unending journey that is grief, it’s important to take a reflective pause and realize how far you’ve come. And sure, I’m walking a path that’s never linear. These emotions recycle unto themselves and come forward unexpectedly. But I’ve come a long way. The anger has lessened as the pages fold over. The questions are no longer shouting from a voice within. I’ve had moments of buoyant joy. Chronicling this process has helped me see that. I can get through this. I am getting through this.

In a fitting coincidence, there was enough room for my last entry a year later. A new year, a new journal. And while there, and certainly here, will continue to be a place to express myself, I want this new phase, this new journal, to be one of hope. To reflect on something I was grateful for that day, to share happy memories of dad or call fondly on what I loved about him most. I want it do its part, however small, to break more light in.

With that in mind, I want to thank everyone who has been encouraging me here. For investing in my writing and rooting me on, always with the careful understanding that it isn’t easy. And not just for me, but for anyone reading these posts – I know they broach heavy topics and remind people how much hurt losing dad has left in its wake. So thank you for supporting me. Thanks for standing by a girl who still crouches under her nightstand lamp after all these years. I can hear the moans of your weighted support just outside my bedroom door.

For a long while, it didn’t register to me that Father’s Day was coming. Not until I walked into stores that wrapped their walls in “gifts for dad!” posters, and saw the barrage of commercials selling grills or ties or tools. It’s strange how these things slip away when the reason to celebrate them is gone.

And oddly, I’ve struggled to write this. I’ve sat, frustrated, staring at blank screens. Deleting, re-writing, arranging paragraphs, and feeling like what I want to say is somehow out of reach. How do I articulate who he was as a father, and how he was a father to me?

There’s a lot of pop psychology around the influence a father has in the life of his daughter. How that relationship can define a woman more than most. And for me – it did. But maybe not just who we were to each other – a father, and a daughter – but because we were so much alike.

I’ve asked mom many times in the past few months what dad would say about me, how he’d talk about me to her. I’ve often wondered who I was to him when I wasn’t around. Everything fell apart so quickly in the end that we didn’t really get to have one last conversation – so I try to fill the absence of those words in whatever way I can. And I suppose you can’t ask of someone in death, what they weren’t in life. Dad always gestured in action, so I ask mom.

And since he wasn’t a man of many words, what she tells me is how he’d always boast “That’s my Toots!” with an enamored grin. Whether I’d stood up for myself at work, or won a race at a track meet, or got in trouble in a way that actually made him more proud than angry. And that’s all he’d really need to say – because it said it all. I was his Toots, so much an extension of him.

I think he prided himself on being a pillar of strength for us all. When I lived in San Diego, mom would collapse against my chest as we hugged at the curb of the departures entrance. She would cry as I pulled my suitcase out of the house, into the truck, and as we pulled up to the airport. But dad, he’d give me an enormous, composed hug as I’d hide my welling tears behind sunglasses. Or so I thought.

Not once, in all the times I put 3,000 miles between us, did I see him cry. But that’s because he didn’t want me to. What mom told me, years later, is that when she’d get back into his truck after watching me safely walk into the airport, she’d find him leaned over the wheel with tears winding down his face. Because his Toots was leaving.

That’s what I want my heart to rejoice in this weekend, that special bond we shared. Last father’s day was probably the worst day we had since he passed. It had only been a few short weeks, and my mom, brother and I were all grieving in intense, different ways. It was raw and incredibly painful, not knowing what to do for ourselves or each other.

So for this father’s day, I just want to be Toots. I want to remember all of the amazing ways he helped piece me together throughout the years. How he understood me better than most, stepping aside to let me grow up, and screw up and get back up, always with the encouraging words I needed.

It was him that talked me down from hysterics in a dark stairway in Chicago in the middle of the day. It was him that gave me confidence when I faced decisions that I struggled to make. It was him that stood behind me, unflinching, whenever I moved cities, or jobs. “There’s very little in life you can’t change,” he’d always say – with the comforting notion that life could be whatever I make it. Just make it good.

And yet, his words still offer that old, wise advice. I can change that he’s not here. I can meet Sunday with gratitude and love for who he was. I can fill my heart with the joy of 30 amazing years. I can share stories of him. I can. I will.

After all, that’s his Toots. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

After a fickle few weeks, Michigan finally gave us summer. Rushes of warm air and a searing sun that lingers into the nighttime. It’s my favorite time of year. 

It was always dad’s too.

He was a summer baby, just like me – both born in August. And he loved nothing more than watching the backyard come to life as the temperature rose. And taking swan dives into the pool, after working hard outside. And sitting on the boat bobbing along with a cold drink and his favorite people.

I think that’s why this time of year can feel as hard as it does, because he loved it so much. And why we were all surprised to be a bit more sensitive and upset than expected over the last few weekends. Because he should be here, enjoying it.

And like most of these warm, inviting weekends – we gather with friends. Friends that really have become family. Friends that we and dad spent years growing with. And when we all got together, over evening drinks or an afternoon brunch, something really lovely happened. They missed dad as much as we did.

Sometimes it’s hard to look outside of your own grief, but in the last few days I’ve realized how mine is just a ripple in an ocean of unrest. So many people miss dad. So many people are grappling with the hole his loss has created in their lives. So many people welcome us with tears in their eyes and toast to him when the sun sets over the water. Because they loved him so much.

It’s a comforting feeling, how much he’s missed – knowing he wasn’t just someone special to us, but, simply, just someone special.

I try not to let losing dad be the center to which my life revolves, but it does in likely more ways than I’m even aware of. And I don’t want it to overshadow all of the things I am, to myself or to other people. I don’t want people to think it’s all I can talk about and live within. I try not to. And there are times I can hear dad’s booming voice in my head “Give it a rest, Toots!” – like he would whenever I was relentless. But there are still moments when people turn away when I talk about it, or tense up when I say his name – and that can really hurt.

So these past few weekends, it’s nice to know that a lot of people are still healing. I’m not just a girl missing her dad. There are so many girls, and boys, and family, and friends, and neighbors and co-workers and sometimes perfect strangers who are missing one hell of a guy.

And in a strange way, that does make it easier.