they get to.

                                                                           

November 2023

Today is just Tuesday. A work day. A "regular old nothing's different" day of the week. Wake up, breakfast, coffee, shower, get the kiddo up and dressed and slog through the morning doing the things. A plain old "time to make the donuts" type of morning (if you're old enough to remember that commercial). Slight change in routine for an 8:00 504 meeting at Bullock, so that's a little different, but other than that, the sun's awake so we're awake. Life, rolling right along. 

Except for Daddy. 

365 days ago life stopped rolling right along for him. Stopping today, too, is the year of firsts without him. 

For me, though, this past year has been heavy with all the ancillary stuff that apparently, at times, comes along with losing a major someone.  Navigating unfamiliar territory, sure, trying to find words to attach to feelings- words that may not have been invented- but also, the popping up of never-ending question marks. Questions that may always be followed with the pregnancy of infinite emptiness. Drowning in wondering and doubt, filling the emptiness with unhealthy thoughts, needing to find answers somewhere. In addition to not having the right words to put to the internal chaos to try to describe it to someone else or to figure out how to remain sane, and along with the endless questions that may or may not have answers, this year has been fraught with sickening and almost paralyzing guilt and undeniable regret. Frightening self-evaluation, that I suppose weaves inself into and among the patterns of grief sometimes, stemming from the harsh realization that there's never enough time, and that we all-too-frequently squander the time we've been given. 

I didn't even give "time" a conscious thought, looking back. What I did focus on, and did pay attention to, was Jenny. At the time, Current Jenny or Feel Good Jenny or Make Me Happy Jenny was in the driver's seat. In hindsight, which is usually laden with truth, the focus was thus: What boy am I dating? What boy do I like? Who am I married to? What is happening to me now that matters more than anything else? What is my schedule like right now? What feels good to me? What do I want to do? What do I care about doing? What's importatnt to me right now in this moment? 

                                                 

I want to be able to say, like my sisters can, "I miss Dad because there's a void that has been left by his absence in my life," which, to some extent, is true for sure. He was my dad, I adored him, and I ache for his guitar-playing crossword puzzling fingers to dance again. I would give anything to sit next to him in a theater and belt out the songs with him as the actors did a much better job on stage, or to carve jack-o-lanterns and stack them like a snowman, or to run across his workshop to turn off the lights so we could see the twinkling lights in his model train as it chugged down the little tracks, burping little steam puffs as it clacked along tiny metal tracks... 

But,

in the most honest and transparent of my soul and in my words, as hard as they are to realize and put out there, the truth is that I cling to memories that are way older than they should be. I have so few adult memories of times with my dad that I may have enough fingers with which to count them. And, in addition to the shortage of recent memories that no one should create for themselves, by the way, in my brain and in my heart-garbage lie things I've done - words I've said, words I haven't said, choices I've made... those I can't put here, and they're the fuel for the regret and guilt that have bound my breath for the last year. The weight of choices and unspent time has rested firmly on my chest, suffocating and slowing, and I've been gasping for air. Little gulps of life-saving breaths from friends and work, lifesaving paddle-shocks from Jesus of course, but I feel like I flop around a bit and settle back into the breath deprivation, chest-heaving and choking, desperately searching. Nothing can replace the time gone. Nothing can say things that were left unsaid. There's no flux capacitor that uses 1.21 jigawatts in a Delorean that can get me back to dad asking, and instead of me saying no, I say yes. Nothing. I can't fix it. The guilt and the regret are loud, and so tangible, and so unbelievably heavy.

                                         

Nancy gets to be sad. She was such warm and constant light to him. She is such a compassionate, thoughtful, loving human, and she was everything to him. They spent 35 years together, bonded and so true and so real... she gets to be sad. She gets to miss him. She breathed in and out with and for him for 13,000 days. They both did. They were one.

                                              

JoAnna gets to be sad. She was the most amazing daughter to him, and with her, he experienced such profound and real fatherhood, the good and the bad, the raw and the bright and shiny... she was exceptional to him, and he to her. It was glorious. She remained steadfast, constant, ever-present, theirs was an outstanding definition of father/daughter. 

Phillip gets to be sad. He never left Daddy's side, metaphorically and physcially. He tended his mom and our Dad both, emotionally and physically, letting her work while he stayed with Dad, doing all the things- the pretty and the not-so-pretty. He has lived with Daddy longer than I ever did, and had conversations and life-lessons I never let myself experience with Dad (because I was so incredibly selfish). He is Dad's son, in all the ways. All of them. 

I don't know for sure, because our relationship has been so strained over the last years, but I'm fairly certain Katie gets to be sad. She adored Daddy, so deeply, and was present and attentive, reaching out and spending time, sharing space and children, throughout the years. She and I have similarly self-evaluative stories, wherein we have both realized so many huge things about ourselves and our lives, and I certainly cannot speak for her, nor do I want to pretend to. She's beautiful, loved him tremendously, though, and somehow I feel like she's grieving huge, and gets to. She gets to. 

Why, then, do I feel like I don't get to be sad? I feel like in the rankings of allowed grief, somewhere my place lies very near the bottom, after perhaps their mailman or one of the Kroger cashiers in Moneta. 

                                                     

I screwed up so much with Daddy, and I have never been so sorry for something in my life. So many mistakes. I missed so much time, so much of his incredibly bright and soft-spoken tenderness because I was so selfish and so sickeningly self-absorbed. I'm not allowed to experience grief- I didn't make space enough before he was gone that leads to the empty it should leave now. It feels more, though, that in the tangle of my heart and brain over this past year, guilt and regret has won. That's what I feel.

                                                 

Horribly, honestly, and regrettably, I didn't make the time for Dad enough to feel the enormous loss that I feel like should accompany sadness, ergo, allow me to feel grief. Guilt and regret? Yup. Wishing for do-overs? Absolutely. Loving him immeasurably? Of course. Aching for my family? One million percent.

Am I grieving? I doubt it. I can't. 

I don't get to.