You deserved better. I deserved better.
I went from holding your hand beside a hospital bed for a month, your skin yellow, hands bruised from God knows how many IV’s, me telling you everything was going to be okay – to holding your lifeless hand in a coffin.
My body has memorized what this position feels like. Hovering over my father, my blood and soul, my fondest memories and my biggest source of pain.
My thumb running over the skin on your hands, so I never forget the texture, the wrinkles you’ve accumulated after years of hard labour, the shape of your fingernails that I cut myself in your first week at the hospital.
Nervous system wired to the sound of your breath. The pauses in between – 8 seconds, 18 seconds, then 28 seconds. The way we sang your songs to you on our last night on Earth – songs that were the soundtrack of our short time together, songs I can see you close your eyes and grip your drink to – sang back to you like a lullaby, lulling you to a sleep you’d never wake from.
All my senses working overtime to store your last moments as a dad of two little girls who have silently grieved their dad their whole lives. For a month I watched your humanity hang in the balance. I held your hand when doctors gave us news that we knew in our bones was coming.
What version of you do I hold on to?
I watched you feel the weight of every choice you’ve ever made while lying in a hospital bed. I helped you write your will and funeral wishes. I built relationships with all your doctors and I listened to every ache, discomfort, anxiety, irritation, and plea for one more chance.
I looked into your eyes any chance I could, to remember that underneath all these tubes and wires and hospital smell – was you, a little boy, golden hair and glasses, who never had a chance.
“You never had a chance, did you?” I asked one day.
“You could say that about a lot of things,” you replied.
Daddy, what version of you do I hold on to? What version of you do I miss? I alternate between the vulnerable, sick and dying man I saw for a month straight who needed me to eat, talk, think, breathe, process, fight. Yellow eyes looking up at me, like I contained everything you needed.
I think to the you, you were before: weak, distant, presence interrupted by planning out your next drink, tail between your legs ashamed, doctors’ appointments and blood work and missed work and a reality that the vicious voices of addiction and trauma refused you to share with anyone. You alone, in your apartment, drowning.
So much of me is tied up in you
I go back further to memories of us laughing nonstop at your apartment. Belly aching, nose-blowing, “stop I can’t breathe” laugh attacks. But that vodka tonic in the corner – the sound of the ice cubes clinking together forever imprinted into my nervous system. The smell of your breath. The internal dissonance between the me that looks past the drink, desperately craving the connection with you and the me that is dreading getting into a car with you later.
Everywhere I look, the evidence of a life spent numbing doesn’t let me land on a version of you that I can miss. I guess I’m feeling a bit angry with you about that.
So much of me is tied up in you and yet I can’t bring myself to think of a memory of a you that I want back. Because if I were to ask for that, to plead with the angels to bring you back – what kind of life would you have, Daddy?
Our lives would be liver transplants and retirement homes at 63, hover sleeping with my phone on loud under the pillow in case of an emergency. Always dreading that one phone call, that you’ve passed away at home – alone. If I got really serious about this ask – I’d have to ask the angels to bring it back to a you before me, a you that was 8 years old that was never held.
And then I’d have to go back and re-arrange the lineage before that too, all those scared and alone little boys and girls in our ancestry that were never held. And now here is the problem: I’ve re-written history. And besides, I think it’s too late.
We can’t take any of it back
You took your last breath on your wedding anniversary with my mom; remains of your human experience here live in the quiet current of the lake outside of your apartment. And we can’t take any of it back.
We spent our time together on Earth trying to understand each other, surely scared of each other, but drawn to each other, nonetheless. Both drowning in weight that didn’t quite belong to us. I’ve known your pain so much more intimately than you ever knew while you were here.
I carried the weight of every time you poured yourself a drink instead of sitting with your discomfort. I’ve memorized your every mood, your shifts in tone, your stories, your excuses, your body language.
Forget walking on eggshells, I was dodging landmines.
I’m mourning a version of me
I probably should have cut you out of my life at some point. Every version of me was built in a way to compensate for the lack of you I had in my life.
Landing on a memory of you I want back isn’t quite as easy as I wish it was. My hands are trembling with guilt as I write this, hoping you know these truths could never stop me from loving you.
You deserved better. I deserved better.
I’m not just mourning never being able to see you again, never being able to hear your voice or laugh again or even having one of your boozy bear-hugs. Not just a future telling my kids about you in past tense. I’m mourning a version of you; you never got to be. And therefore, I’m mourning a version of me that I never got to be either.
It was never good news
Instead of trying to pick a version of you to miss, I’m going to think about your heart. The traces you’d leave that – not only was it once beating, but it beat for us, despite your inability to really show us that how we dreamt of as little girls.
I miss knowing that I could call you at any time and you’d be happy or surprised to hear from me. I miss the side of you that you only let me and sister see – that sweet, goofy side. I miss the way that every year on my birthday, you’d explain how little I once was.
You’d hold out your arm and say, “you were like from here to here.” I miss the way you’d say, “back when you were just a twinkle in daddy’s eye,” because these are moments, I did not doubt your love.
I won’t miss feeling like I couldn’t tell you the truth. I won’t miss trying to redirect conversations away from you blaming the world for your problems. I won’t miss the anxiety in my chest before I asked how you were doing, because it was never good news.
I won’t miss perceiving you as too fragile to handle life. I won’t miss the mental gymnastics of trying to have a relationship with someone I have been emotionally managing my whole life. I won’t miss the guilt I always felt when I thought about you. I won’t miss the way I’d demonize you to console myself.
I won’t miss dreading, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I won’t miss hospital visits and wishing things were different. I won’t miss dancing around trying to get you to stop drinking. I won’t miss feeling angry at you for your addiction, for cutting everyone out of your life; for putting the weight of your decisions on two girls who were just trying to find their place in the world.
It doesn’t feel fair, but it feels right
I will work on letting that all go, but I guess that would mean accepting that the only reason I’m free of those things, is because you’re gone. Truly gone.
You died never truly being able to hold me. I’m trying to fight my instinct to spin this in an angle that sums up that your suffering meant something, that my suffering meant something, and that from here, we heal.
Because you’re finally free, and in a way, I’m finally free, and that means I’ll go the rest of my life without you. That’s the trade-off.
It doesn’t feel fair, but it feels right.
I will grieve all the possibilities of our story, ending. I will grieve all the hope I had in things turning around. I will grieve all the despair I’ve always known is just around the corner. I will grieve the childhood I never got, the protection I never got, and the parent I never fully had. And at some point – I will be able to hold all of this together, hopefully without guilt, and with so, so, so much love.
I grieve you fully, and I grieve me, too.
Elisa
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