Her widowed father brought them through poverty and his own poor health, 10 years after his passing she realizes she inherited his strength.
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This month marks the ten-year anniversary of my father’s passing. As much as I want it to hurt, want to miss him terribly and spend my Sunday sobbing over pictures of the man I lost in my late twenties, I won’t do that this year. The past three months I have been tested in every way imaginable by life. Financially, emotionally and spiritually. Along with my own resolve to power through these times, there is one other person who has always been in my head, holding my hand so to speak. Helping me remember that even in the darkest times we still have someone in our lives who is there to help us. Even if they are gone forever.
Last year I wrote here about my mother passing away when I was an infant and how I was raised by my widowed father. At that point in my life I wasn’t struggling so much and that left plenty of room to reminisce about a father-daughter relationship and how it evolved over the twenty-six years of my life that we had together. This year though, has reminded me of some of the hardest times we both went through as a family and how without me even knowing it, has and continues to help me through my own struggles that are besieging me today.
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My earliest memories of my life with my father after my mother’s death comes from around the age of 3. My dad owned his own floor covering business and we didn’t have very much money or resources. What we did have was a one bedroom, one bath rundown duplex on the East side of town that his best friend rented to us. We didn’t have any furniture for months at first. Only a full sized mattress with some bedding. To this day I can remember my dad staying up at night to make sure the cockroaches stayed off of me while I slept. I still don’t know if my dad knew I was awake most of those nights but those memories are embedded in my brain as if it were yesterday.
I can tell you now that I’m sure he was sad and ashamed that he couldn’t afford to provide more for us both, but we did have a roof over our head and place to sleep.
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As a small child I know I didn’t comprehend what my dad may have been going through emotionally during that time. I can tell you now that I’m sure he was sad and ashamed that he couldn’t afford to provide more for us both, but we did have a roof over our head and place to sleep. As a little girl this was normal for me. It wasn’t a bad situation where my father wasn’t being the best parent he could be; we were just getting by.
I would spend mornings and afternoons with his best friend’s family while he went to work. In those times I would learn basic Spanish as that was pretty much their first language. Evening would come and with it, my father. We would all share dinner and then it was back to the nights of my father vigilantly keeping watch over me.
Eventually things got better and we moved. I can’t quite recall the exact age I was when we moved into our new apartment but I remember thinking of it as a castle! I had my own room and we had furniture now, not just a mattress and we cooked and ate in our own kitchen. I still was sent to friends’ houses while my father went to work but we always ended up home together each evening and that was all that mattered.
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Shortly after my eighth birthday my dad had a massive heart attack. I can remember his worker picking me up from school and bringing me to the hospital. The image of him lying in the bed, looking so ill and not like the man who had dropped me off that morning, burns forever in my mind to this day. He looked at me that evening as I sat in the chair in his dimly lit room while I did my homework, and said with tears in his eyes, “Misty I promise that I will never leave you. Things are going to be OK.” I simply looked at him and replied, “I know,” and went back to my work. I know this exchange happened exactly like that because later on in life when things were hard after I started my own family, he would remind me of that conversation. I’m not sure why I was so sure that things would be OK but I was. Over the years to come, that response of “I know” would become my mantra when told things would get better.
I never looked down on my father. I never cried or whined when I had to go year to year without new school clothes.
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To the outsider over the next several months when my father came home after heart surgery, it might have looked like we were doomed. Some might have looked at us with pity and whispered behind our backs about how sad our situation was, but we still had food and a roof over our heads and even though my father was struggling alone to obtain disability and keep the wheels of our life turning, I never thought anything different than before. We were simply doing what we always did; getting by. It’s all I’d ever known.
I never looked down on my father. I never cried or whined when I had to go year to year without new school clothes. My father would alter my jeans as I grew taller and we frequented garage sales and the thrift store for tops and shoes. I was never ashamed and never felt out of place amongst my school friends. Throughout my teenage years, our living and money situation would fluctuate wildly from comfort to struggling again but I never doubted my father one bit.
I also never thought about where he found the resolve and courage to keep going either. It was just a part of him.
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Three months ago I lost a job with a nursing company that I’d been with for four years. I struggled to find a new job in my field and strangely it was very difficult. After two months I started feeling my depression creeping in and some days I felt like things would never be the same or even close again. I had not had to experience the conditions of living that I had as a child again until now.
I chided myself late at night while crying in my bed. I told myself what a loser I was. How could this be happening to me? I never wanted to end my life but I could not seem to find even the tiniest light of hope at that point. If it hadn’t been for some very good friends in my life I very well might have ended up in the street with no home.
Last night driving home, I smiled as a song came on the radio that reminded me for the first time that I’d forgotten my father’s death date had passed two days ago.
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I began remembering during those nights when I felt all hope draining from my exhausted mind, about some of the even harder times during my childhood. The times that my father would open the last can of beans and give them to me to eat while he had nothing. The times that we would actually fish for our supper. I cried out to my God and to my father asking why I couldn’t be as strong as I know he had been. I was ashamed of myself not only because this predicament had befallen me, but because I wasn’t even trying to raise a small child alone! It was only me. I began to dig deep inside of myself, trying to find even a tiny piece of the strength that, as an adult, I now know my father had to have possessed to keep us going all those years. I convinced myself I just didn’t’ have it.
I finally found a job earlier this month and it was such a blessing. More pay, health benefits and job security. I finally felt a little bit of strength coming back to my weak mind and body.
Next week I will receive my first paycheck since starting my new job. I’ve gone three months without a paycheck and have struggled harder than any time since my childhood. I’ve rationed food over the past month to make it last. I’ve only put enough gas in my tank to get me to and from work and I’ve done some cleaning on the side just to pay my important bills. Harder than that, I’ve had to swallow my pride and accept small amounts of money from friends to help pay for my medications that I desperately need.
Last night driving home, I smiled as a song came on the radio that reminded me for the first time that I’d forgotten my father’s death date had passed two days ago. I hadn’t even set aside a moment to remember him and cry like in the past. Oddly I didn’t feel guilty about it.
As I laid my head on my pillow in the early hours this morning, I whispered to myself that things were going to be OK and that they were going to get better and as I curled myself under the blankets before I drifted off to sleep I said out loud to myself and the room, “I know.”
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This Father’s Day I will not talk about how much I miss my father and how sad I am that he is gone. Those are both obvious things that will never change. Instead I choose to celebrate the strong man he was and the fact that he was the most wonderful father that I could have been blessed to have.
I realize now that I have had that strength inside of me that he possessed when I was young, all this time. I just didn’t know it was there. His promise that night in that hospital room still rings true to this day.
Even though his body and presence left me ten long years ago, he hasn’t ever left my heart or my mind. He was also right about what he said. Things are going to be OK. This I know. Sometimes it takes us remembering the hard times with those that have passed and not just the good happy moments, to teach us how to really celebrate the lives of our father’s that are gone.
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Photo: Getty Images