Five years ago I sat down to write a story to say goodbye to my Dad
(For my Dad) who had passed away some 7 years prior. It was the first blog of this site, it would become a 5 year journey for me. Originally I did it mainly to help myself, to find a way back from where my life had gone since his death. I thought by trying to finally come to terms with the loss his death represented to me it might in some way fix the past. Or at very least allow me to move forward in a very different way from the past 7 year since his death. Some 5 years later I would like to say it fixed everything. Unfortunately it did not. It did not fix it because my Dad could really not help me. Now only a memory, his ability to help me moved on when he left this earth. His spirit, his memory, those moments I valued, they ended up being all that was left to help me find the path forward.
In a few days, it will mark the 12th year since he left. He left my Sister, Brother and two Step-Sisters with a void which only could be described as unimaginable. He left the woman he loved with a hole in her soul. None of us in our reconstituted family has ever been the same. He left my children with out the chance to truly appreciate the star growing brightly that he was ( my children were 9,7,5,3 when he died). Too young to understand how much of a giant he was, the anchor he was. This I guess is no different for any family that loses a loved one who was the glue and the magnet that pulled everyone in and bonded them together. My Dad was that man. Our history as a family is riddled like many others, with challenges, ups and downs. In the first 10 years of our lives we had many more downs then ups. Most of the downs can be easily attributed. My Father and Mother divorced when we were young enough to still be saved. My Father grew and evolved after the marriage to our Mother ended. I believe that he freed himself to save not only him but the children he loved so much.It was a blessing in disguise for not only him but for my Brother and Sister also. Moving on gave us the freedom to move along with him. It made us better people. We needed to be free from her and he cut the chain. It was not easy, as the scars of the past always stay and they always remind, and they often hurt. Sometimes you can touch them and in an instance you can recall all the pain, the sorrow, the torment; the memories as real as if they were yesterday. As you grow and age you find ways to grow with those scars, you learn to turn them into strength, opportunity and less into burdens. My Dad knew what he needed in his life after his divorce. He found it in a woman who became his true love. He dedicated himself to her and her two very young daughters. At the same time he invested in my brother and sister and I to help us rediscover opportunity, life and what we could become. I think the reason my dad plunged himself so diligently into his new families life was he was striving to build a life for them that he had been unsuccessful in building for us. He did it with conviction, with passion and motivation. In the end I think they would tell anyone that he succeeded. I know in my mind he did. Today my Step Sisters are both very successful women, mothers, wives and have beautiful families.
When he left suddenly that day in 2001 only 59 years old, he created a vacuum that no one in our family could ever really have anticipated or understood. Our family, like many other families were spread out over a large geographical area. All of us grown, with very busy and hectic lives. My Dad was always the glue and the magnet that brought us together. Since he has been gone we have failed miserably to keep the family together. Maybe this was natural. Perhaps it was the only thing that could happen. It is as though maybe we were really good, even great together when he was here but when he was gone. Not so much. Perhaps this often happens. I saw this same result with the family of my first wife. Her mother was the same glue, the same magnet. She kept her 5 children close and bonded. She passed away 3 months before my Dad. In a twist of faith my Dad died on what would have been her birthday. My first wife's family has never been the same either. They have all grow far apart. It almost seems pervertedly natural. Maybe the hole they leave is more like, ''space they create''. That this, ''space'' is like a buffer that pushes everyone else outwards, makes them farther away, harder to hold on to. In the end we seem to be looking over a canyon, each member at their own end divided by the hole or the space their departure leaves. This left us blowing in the wind, not really knowing how to hold on to him or each other any longer. We simply hold on to the meories of him and what we were when he was alive. We drifted our separate ways and now only speak through e-mails or facebook. I believe we have only once since his death ever been together as a family. It is a sad legacy to his memory and what he tried to build.
I often wonder if my Dad would be disappointed and sad in the way our family grew away from each other. At how we let his departure leave such a vast void. Many times I have wanted to try and fill that space, bridge the gap or fill it in. It has aways failed. I don't think anyone else has really tried either. Not becuase they did not want to try but only because It seemed almost as though we were afraid we would fail miserably at holding up what he built. Everyone in our Family moved on the best they could and there was no way to duplicate or revive what he had created. I am not sure what I would say to him now, if ever I had the chance to talk to him. Maybe he already knew that when he was gone this is exactly how it would be. Maybe he understood better then any of us just how much of the glue and magnet he was. Maybe that's why he worked so hard to hold us together. Lots of maybes there. The sad reality is the maybe's become the only thing you can hold on to to give you comfort. If I had the chance I would want to tell him just how much I still miss him, about how every day from 12 years ago has seemed at some points impossible. That those 12 years have felt like a fracture in time, like the world has moved but I didn't move equal to it. That my life turned in another direction to move as far away from the reality of his death that it could. I tried to shelter my own emotions from the enormity of the truth that he was gone and could never come back. You build whatever you can, you seek solace in any vice which will help you keep going. You build a reality that is so far detached from the pain that you blind yourself to the damage you cause through being lost.
My life imploded 12 years ago. His death, my Mother in Laws death, 911, all to much in a short 9 month span. It all disintegrated into pieces that I have never been able to glue back together. I lost everything I cared about. I lived a nightmare that played itself out in a none stop loop. I hurt those I loved, I did things I never would have thought possible. Finally five years ago when i wrote ( For My Dad) I began to deal with his death. This allowed me to begin to rebuild my life. Personally, professionally and morally. I have been down a tough road. The road is mine though, I own the full responsibility for what I built. No one shares this responsibility. I have worked hard to tear down all the wrong and rebuild it the right way. In a fashion my Dad would have been proud of. I have had help. Lots and lots of help. There are people I owe everything too for helping me find my way back, like the Ti-Oiseau.. In the end though, you can never get back everything you lost, you can never be what you once were. You cannot repair all the damage.It cannot be erased and you cannot rewind it. You can only hope to make it something new. Something that would stand as a testament to those you hurt. A testament to my Dad to show him that everything he struggled to create, everything he sacrificed to build for our family was not lost after all. That somewhere, maybe in the end, the hole he left was actually not a hole but a bridge. A bridge to use to get back to where I needed to go.
I would like to take a walk together in the woods out back of his home; just me, my dad, my brother and my sister. Followed along by my dads two big Labradors, wandering aimlessly as we meander through the trees, together again the 4 of us. The chance to be a kid one more time, a chance just to be together to make it all right again, to find the love and happiness we once knew. To laugh, and to cry, to debate our lives and the turns they have taken. A chance to not take for granted something we all take for granted, a simple walk with someone we love. I dream of walking out of the woods to the house where all those who he loved and who loved him were there waiting. His wife, his step daughters, all of his grandchildren. He touched so many lives it would be incredible to touch him one last time, It is a pipe dream I know but you take what you can get and you hold it close. The harshness of life is everything has more value in hindsight, except hindsight does not get you reality, it only feeds you small doses of memories and nostalgia. It allows you to hope for the unachievable, what you know you cannot have, it gives you only what you need to try and keep going while simply surviving with what you actually have.
Time will always catch up to us. Reality also does. It is the inevitability of life. We must be accountable for our actions, no matter the reason for them. Over the next few months I will have to face the consequences of the 9 years of time I lost in the void his departure left. I will face these realities knowing that I will always have the greatest of who he was within me and no void can ever take that away.
Love you Dad. Miss you.
Rob
