I miss you (Patreon)

A/N: I have no place to really put this so I’m putting it here. It’s where my family/friends cannot access it. But it’s also not falling on deaf ears if that makes sense? Not Night Market at all.  I have posted this, deleted it. Posted it, deleted it. I'm just going to put it here now and walk away.

I didn’t get to say goodbye.

I don’t think we often do in these situations. Most people pass from our lives suddenly and even when you know it is coming, it still takes you by surprise. I didn’t get to say goodbye. Not in a way that mattered. I was too scared to face it.

I don’t remember when he was first introduced to my life. Twenty? Twenty one? I remember hating him though. I remember being angry that he took my mom from me like I was some child that still needed her by my side. I remember I was angry that everyone instantly loved him while I had to plaster on a smile and pretend this was great. I remember hating what he represented. I remember feeling like I had to hate him because I already had a dad. My mom was angry with how I treated him. I didn’t think I treated him all that bad because if she only knew how much I bit my tongue. And meanwhile, my actual father was off on the sidelines. How dare my mother get to move on and become happy when she was the one to choose to break our family apart. Remember when I said I was twenty?

He was annoying. He told the same stories over and over again. It got to the point through the years that I could predict them all. A rolodex of memories he had from yesteryear. He would become fixated on things that didn’t matter. He would bring every subject back around to what he was currently mulling over in his mind. Everything he talked about was work work work. My mom changed. She became someone I didn’t know. She moved away from me. I was left alone and suddenly had to navigate a world I didn’t understand and not even a year later, become a mother to two children without surrounding support.  And for years I spent my time silently resenting him. Never calling him dad, not once, because why would I? I had a dad. He was moms husband. I drank to get through their wedding day.

I hated him for so long. 

And then one day I didn’t.

Life suddenly changed and the little things began to add up. Like the way he was Jewish and yet spent every Christmas here at my house. The way I would wake up in the morning to my stepdaughters giggling because he would get up at 6 a.m to play cards with them. The way he built a treehouse out back and a fort in the girls’s room one year. He told his annoying jokes and he told his stupid stories and he built fences for my yard and drove up here to see the kids and us every six months. More than his own children. He flew me out when he didn’t have to. Putting me on flights in guise of ‘coming to work’ when it was really to see my mom. He took me to wonderful restaurants whenever I was down there because he wanted to share them with me.

He bought me old books.

When my son was born he was at the hospital. So was the man I was supposed to call dad. But, the one who was a reluctant name was the father that stayed. He stayed and he marveled over this little one that had been born. He held my son for years. Even when my son got big, he pulled him up in his lap. Called him Partner. Watched him do puzzles and showed him games on his phone. He bought him a train conductor hat and gave him his old marbles. 

During those final days, when he couldn’t get out of bed, my five year old sat by his side and silently played video games next to him to keep him company. He watched his grandfather die quietly and stoically. He did so much better than me.

He drove my mom here during covid for the birth of my second child. He was the first one I saw when I brought her home. I can still picture him standing in my living room, staring down at her tiny form and breathing out “oh, wow.” because she was so small and so perfect. He colored with her when she was a toddler. He put together the kitchen set that now sits in the garage.

When the day came to go through his things I found a box of notes. In it were letters and drawings my stepdaughters gave him when they were still tiny. Along with a purple necklace that had been gifted to him by their naive hands. Something most would throw away, he kept tucked near his bedside.

He was a grandfather far more than my dad ever was or ever has been and I never thanked him for that.

Because during those long months after the news, during the time I went to help my mom, I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t walk in that room and see him in a hospital bed. I couldn’t say goodbye.

And then he was gone.

We were supposed to have more time.

He was supposed to be there when my oldest graduated. He was supposed to see my middle on her first prom day. He was supposed to be able to play with my son and teach him how to woodwork. He was supposed to have a relationship with my youngest. Instead, he didn’t get that. The youngest doesn’t even know who he is.

My biggest regret is not telling him that I love him. One of the only times I did became a family story because he was so happy that I did.  He was a better grandfather than my kids biological one. He was a better father than the one I still have. I never got to tell him that I don’t hate him. I never got to go in that room and say goodbye. The last time I had seen him, I went to take my kids out for the day. He was rushed to the hospital while we were gone and I didn’t visit him there because I would be back in a few months.

Then it was over.

Why couldn’t I just go sit with him? Why was my five year old son more brave than me? My teens sat in that room with him and had a conversation with him. A month later, when I was there again, I knew, I knew, it was the end. But I couldn’t even look in the room. After everything he did, I couldn’t face death with him. I hate myself a little for that.

I don’t know what I believe. I don’t know if he’s still around somehow. If there is an afterlife. If he comes in dreams. I would like to think he is watching the kids. On the darkest days I think I haven’t seen him as some odd sense of punishment.

What I do know is this. Grief is silent. Grief is a solitary thing that I don’t know how to handle. It’s been two years and I feel suffocated with it still. Don’t talk about it. Smile still. See the silver lining. He’s not suffering. Go out with your friends. Continue as normal. Be strong for the kids. There is so much more going on than what is happening in your own little corner of your life and you have to remember that everyone is going through something right now and that your pain and your experience is your own and we can’t ever tarnish others' days with it. I would try to talk and I would feel guilty. I would cry and then worry about scaring my kids. I would try to escape and panic would seize me. He died and I walked right into weddings and birthdays and the holidays. I made lunches and dinners and taught school for the youngest ones and only once, only once, did I ever have someone come to my house and take the responsibility from my hands for a few hours so I could cry.

It’s been two years and I don’t think the pain has diminished. I just think everyone's gotten sick of it and so I have stopped speaking.

I wish I hadn’t been me during those final months. I wish I hadn’t been so scared. Death has haunted my life in strange ways since I was young but this one hurt the most. Every person I look at is another opportunity to be left and to grieve. Time is always ticking. I feel like screaming so often and yet can’t.

I miss him. I don’t think there will be a day I see him again. I hope there is a day my mom will. That my son and daughters will. My middle has dreamed of him and he told her it was going to be okay. More than anything I hope that is true. I hope he continues to tell her that every time it gets rough. I’ll gladly sit in grief if it means they get to see him, even if it's all made up in the end.

Two years.

It hasn’t gotten better. Not a single day. I’m not his daughter though. I was the child that entered into his life later, angry, sarcastic, full of the world and not yet wondering if it would get worse. I wasn’t the wife that lost a husband. I wasn’t the sibling that lost the only family they had left. I wasn’t the kids that grew up with him or the friends that had been by his side for twenty years. Out of all of the people in his life, I sometimes feel like I should be the last to cry.

I know he loved me. I know it because of every single time he showed up for me. I’m sorry I never had the chance to return the favor.