A Different Year

Uncle Bob (left) and Dad

Today is the anniversary of the day my father died in 2013. I will always remember that day - it started with a shot shortly after 5:00am with a call from my mother. My father was in the hospital, very ill with complications from congestive heart failure. My mother called to say she received a call from the doctor saying to come now, he was very sick. In her words, trembling, "your father is very ill."

David and threw on our clothes and headed out the door. We were the first to arrive at the hospital around 5:30am (we live the closest) and he had passed five minutes earlier. Soon everyone would arrive and we would begin the odyssey that is the year in your life after a parent dies.

My year was filled feelings of guilt not spending enough time with my mother, pain with the loss of a relationship that would never be different that it was, gratitude for a father that gave me so much of who I am, and anxiety - lots of anxiety. It would creep up out of nowhere. I kept imagining that morning, what my father looked like the night before, and his painful last days of life. I ached watching him struggle to eat when good food and wine were a central part of his enjoyment of life. Old age and illness can be so cruel.

Over time the anxiety dissipated as distance grew between that day and the rest of my days. I began to gain a new sense of myself. In February I decided it was time to change my hair color. I went russet red. I loved it. By November I pixied it and haven't looked back.Who knew hair color and cut could make such a difference?

I picked up reading again - with a vengence - and lost myself in "chicklit" and then in books about travel, women and finding ourselves. Much of it included food and France. Why France? I'm not sure. Except my father was born on Bastille Day and he always had a thing for all things French, Marie Antoinette and the fleur de lis. Regardless, the books connected me with real women who struggled to find new identities through their work and their travels.

Occasionally these books included a story about the loss of a parent - usually a father - and it gave me time to reflect and sometimes even to respond with a cathartic cry. I cried not because I associated directly with the writer's experience, but because so often I wished I'd had a closer relationship and a deeper friendship with him. But he made it hard. And somewhere along the road, I gave up. I'm not proud of that. I am sad. I grieved and continue to grieve in some ways for what I didn't have and deeply needed - a father to know and to know me. I owe him so much and I wish I could say thank you one last time. I wouldn't be who I am without you.