Oh Dad, I Miss You

Second post today, but I am suddenly overcome by emotion...

Oh how I miss my father. I miss his tall, slim figure in the hallway peeking in to check on me in my room when I was a child. I miss the way he held me on his lap and told told me I was beautiful and smart. I miss the way he would always sit and play Scrabble with me when I was a kid, letting me use a dictionary as a spell-checker so I could become proficient at the game. I miss his deep, calm voice that soothed when my mother was frantic and raging. I miss how he used to send me into the living room and tell me not to peek in the kitchen while he made little trays of special appetizers, just for me, with toothpicks in them to make them special. I miss the smell of his turkey rice soup simmering on the stove, and the way he always gave me a big hug when he came home from work in his tan or light yellow button-down shirt. I miss his dark brown trousers... I never in my life saw him in jeans, sweats, or shorts... and his mallard duck cuff links. I miss the way he smelled, how he looked when I'd catch a glimpse of him shaving in the bathroom, how he hid little surprises for me on the top shelf of his bedroom closet. I miss how he never used Kleenexes because they were wasteful, but always had a clean white handkerchief in his pocket for a nose blow or when I needed my tears wiped away. I miss his black socks lined up neatly in the drawer, and the way he always gave me the green olive from his martini and let me play with the little plastic swords the olives came on. I miss Michelob beer in the fridge and the big green 1972 Ford station wagon in the driveway that he kept and drove for more than 15 years. I deeply miss the sound of his voice, singing loud and clear along with Al Jolson or Patsy Cline or Jim Reeves on the record player. Oh how he loved to sing. I miss going to Hersheypark together every summer and watching him play skee ball until he won me a prize, and I miss his hugs. I was his only child. It has been 21 years, and I am so sad he is gone.

Did I ever tell you about his death? About how I was a newlywed and had found out just days prior that I was expecting my first child, but hadn't told anyone but my husband yet? Did I tell you how, because I was being shunned by a religion that I grew up in but no longer believed in, they called me so cold and flat on the phone and said, "Your father passed away"? Did I tell you how I dropped the phone and screamed until I could scream no more? How could he be gone? He was fine. He'd died in his sleep of a massive heart attack. I was on my way out the door to take my stepkids to Pizza Hut and got that call. My husband drove me to my mother's house to comfort her, even though they told me not to come... the religious leaders. I thought my mother needed me. My Dad, he wasn't in any religion, and what did religion matter when my father was dead anyway? Did I tell you that on the drive out to the country, sitting in the passenger seat numb with shock, I saw the hearse carrying my father's body going the opposite way, passing us on the road? Did I tell you that when I arrived at my childhood home, my mother was weeping, surrounded by her friends from her religion, none of whom could even speak a word of kindness to me when my father had died just an hour or two prior? Shunning is real, and very hurtful, and may I add that there is no "sin" so dire that anyone deserves such treatment, and then I will add that I had never smoked, didn't drink, never did drugs, remained chaste until marriage, and my "sin" worthy of such treatment was to be a Christian of a different sect than their religion. Did I ever mention here that after I stood, numb, in that kitchen where my father used to make trays of appetizers and play Scrabble with me, someone walked up to me and handed me a set of clean sheets and said, "do something useful for your mother. Go change the sheets on her bed."

And then I walked in there, alone in the dim, quiet room where my father kept those little surprises for me in his closet when I was a child and where he still had his rows of clean handkerchiefs and black socks in the drawers and the mallard cuff links on the dresser, and I set the sheets down, and I looked at the rumpled sheets and blankets on the bed where my father had just died, and I gingerly folded them up to take to the washing machine, my tears dripping silently off my face and mixing with what was left of my father on those sheets.

Dad, I miss you so much, and I thought the pain was not so bad this year. I was fine all day and then suddenly it hit me just now, that you have been gone from my life longer than you were in it. It's so unfair, you never got to know any grandchildren, never got to see me as an adult. It's so unfair that they took your ashes and threw them away instead of giving them to me to save or scatter in a place where I could visit and remember. There is no marker for your earthly remains, Dad, but there is a permanent marker for you in my heart. I love you Dad.

For a story I wrote in memory of my wonderful father, click here.