Since You've Been Gone...

Today is my dad’s 83rd birthday, well, if he were still with us.  It is hard.  I think I have done a good job staving off the grief.  I mean, there are moments that come.  Hard ones.  Ones that bring me up short.  I think my mind finds this groove where he is still with us, but just somewhere else.  I mean, I hadn’t lived with him for years.  So months would go by that I didn’t see him.  Then when my parents moved to Ojai, I saw them much more regularly.  And over the years, the contact grew more frequent until he finally left.  

So I guess it hasn’t come as an acute absence in my life.  I visited him almost everyday.  But since we didn’t live together the absence of him is somehow less than I am sure it is for my mom...

This doesn’t mean I do not feel the loss. I think it is just easier to distance myself from it.  Which, if you are a regular reader, you already know I am a master at creating distance...

I am not sure how I feel today.  Sad.  A little lost.  No real plan about what we are going to say or how to celebrate his life today on his birthday.  I think we are going to do things that he would have liked to do:  go to the Grand Canyon, eat German Chocolate Cake, go to a meeting.  Those are things he would have enjoyed.

It is funny how much I am like him has come up for me on this drive.  My mom and I have been laughing, quite frequently and hard, about how many things I do that are totally my dad.  He had all these little quirks...

Whenever he would go over a small hill while driving, he would yell “Wheeeeee!”  And I started doing that on this trip.  The first time, I did it unintentionally, well, at least unconsciously.  But there after, driving on all these Arizona and California backroads, there were a lot of little hills and I just started doing it.  My mom and I both laughed and pointed out how like him it was that I did it the first time, and now I just do it.

My father was a compulsive windshield washer...every single time we stopped for gas, he would clean all the windows on the car.  And I am my father’s daughter.  This started awhile ago for me.  I think as I age, my vision fails a little and something like bug guts all over the windshield now really bothers me.  I don’t like my vision being impaired and I hate all the dead bugs.  So now, every time we stop for gas, I clean the windows and windshield, while my mom sits inside the car laughing her ass off.  We always knew he and I butted heads so much because we were so alike...

My father was constantly aware of gas prices.  It used to drive me crazy. He talked about it all the time and then would drive 30 miles to get cheaper gas.  The distance he drove thereby negating the savings he would achieve.  Probably as a rebellion to this, I never looked at gas prices.  I just got gas when I needed it.  It mattered not that it was the cheapest.  I just never looked at what gas cost.  The differential was negligible in my opinion.  But on this trip, given that we are driving a diesel and gas is fucking expensive thanks to our government trying to take over the world to secure oil and gas production, which isn’t working by the way, our gas prices have never been higher.  Once we got out of California, the prices dropped significantly, but even in Arizona, they are fucking high.  $8 a gallon at one place.  I didn’t need gas then so I avoided that cost, but it is regularly costing us $5.50 to $6.50 a gallon. Maybe my dad is taking over my mind...

None of the above are bad things, just things that he used to do that used to drive me a little crazy that I am now doing.  Perhaps we just cannot avoid becoming our parents.  For good or bad.  They are just in us, quite literally, so their issues play out in us, no matter how much we try to deny and avoid that.

This whole road trip is a tribute to my dad.  He would have loved this trip.  He loved nature and National Parks and we are even camping one night in his honor.  Well, it is glamping.  My mom, not a camper, is being a sport about sleeping in a tent to honor him on this trip, granted it is a tent with a bathroom and air conditioning...my dad liked to rough it, my mom not so much.  So we found a compromise, just like they did for almost 60 years.  How two people made it that long being so fundamentally different is a miracle in and of itself!

I imagine today is going to be up and down.  I am going to feel happy and sad.  I am going to move through the day with the idea and memory of my dad close.  Even writing this I can feel the tears welling up.  And I can feel my resistance to them, and I wonder why do I resist?  And I am reminded of another trait that I am like my dad.  He didn’t do sad well either.  He didn’t do down well or unhappy or still. IHe did angry well.  He did happy well.  He did funny well.  But not sad.  And I guess the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree...

But I am learning that grief that is not resisted opens you up.  Attempting to live in a way that avoids the pain, the loss and the grief shuts you down and closes you off from yourself, God and others.  I think we have gotten this very wrong as a species.  We so want to avoid the pain, and in so doing, we increase it a million fold.  Finding a place for the grief to exists within us, making room for it in our lives is one of the great lessons of loss.  We are not supposed to live like it doesn’t hurt or no longer matters.  We are being given a great gift with each loss.  To allow it to break us open and to allow us to see that all suffering is the same in all of us.  Pain is pain.  Grief is grief.  Loss is loss.  This is a universal human experience.  And we really have only two choices:  allow it to shut us down and off, thereby pushing it away from us and our lives. But when we do this we curtail our ability to feel everything.  Or we can allow the grief to open us up, welcome it home and find a cozy place for it to dwell inside us.

So, I guess today, my task is to move through this auspicious day with my dad in all his many forms in my life.  In the sadness I feel at the loss of him, in the love I feel for him, in the gratitude I feel for his life and all he taught me, gave me.  I miss you Dad.  I love you Dad.  Happy Birthday.  I hope you are doing something wonderful wherever you are.  If you have time today, drop in on mom and I, we would love to get a message from you.  I hope you feel honored today.  I hope you enjoy being forever given to the Grand Canyon.  I know how much you loved it and I will always remember the summer we rafted the Colorado.  It was the trip of a lifetime and it changed me, forever. Just like you did...