Everywhere I go, I keep seeing my father.
Coming out of the yoga class I can finally attend now, he walks beside me, makes a joke about how I entered class late and smiles, eyes twinkling while I laugh. “Caught me.”
He drives past in the car for which I stop short before crossing the street. He does not see me, even though he glances out his car window, eyes exact watery-blue. I recognize them everywhere. In another life, they were safety to me.
Whole Foods produce aisle, I spot him with such startling clarity I have an impulse to abandon cart and run. But he’s not there.
No, my father’s not stalking me — the opposite, really — he lives in Louisiana with his now wife, on property her son owns or something, I hear from my aunt. The only thing clear I haven’t seen or talked to my father in years.
The why is too complicated and distressingly simple. After years of fits and starts and complications, when faced with the ultimatum (hers not ours) of choosing his new wife or daughters his decision was injuriously instantaneous. Somehow, her toxicity is his oxygen. And our terrible terrible loss.
…
The light of my life, the granddaughter my father will never meet, 11 years old this past Easter Sunday — named after my dad’s mother, Isabel— will continue to grow and change. Still her vulnerability reminds me: the father he was before he became whoever he is now would have adored her. Delight in the hilarious remarks, infectious mischief.
(The way he recognized my sister and me when I was little: from a painless sweet center, blue eyes that saw us the right way without trying about it.) That it is his loss does not make it easier.
I do recognize it is better for my daughter than for my son, who did meet my father. Who went to visit. Who does remember. And doesn’t understand why his grandfather cut off his children and grandchildren. Knows it for what it is: vulgar, weak, unforgivable.
Who looks at me on Christmas when the gift card to Barnes & Noble arrives and vacillates from “I don’t want it” to “Sure, I’ll take his stupid money.”
So these gray-haired blue-eyed fathers I keep seeing it turns out are innocent eighty-something Dallasite strangers, some of them fathers, certainly, just none of them mine.
After prolific bouts of therapy, though, I know the drill: when a sighting occurs, banish him from my head and avoid derailment. I can only control myself, not him. I know this, have known this. Don’t give him another second of your time, my stern whisper.
But today — maybe because I sweat through 27 hatha yoga postures and drip, I don’t know, compassion? awareness? exhaustion? — maybe because Sunday is Father’s Day, and I can’t celebrate my own, I allow myself: “Why am I thinking about him? What am I trying to tell myself?”
I don’t know. But it leads me to this: what is the difference between feeling my truth and wallowing in it? The concept of “self-pity” so repugnant I stand in my own way to make sure I don’t go there. But in doing so with such vigilance, I wonder, might I be pushing down what needs to be acknowledged to let go?
Maybe sitting with the pain of losing my father opens the possibility for transformation? Maybe I don’t have to be strong about it. Maybe it’s worth a shot.
As if in answer, my stepfather — who died in January 2020 just before Covid exploded — George appears in front of me.
Forever the Marlboro Man until his body started giving way around age 84. Then stubborn falls from lack of balance, rare hallucinations unsettling, eventually found to be Parkinson’s.
George was dad to me and Gramps to my children, enduring my occasional stubborn stance when I was in my twenties, solidly stepping with zero pageantry into the space my father deserted. Today I feel tears on my cheeks because maybe I should have told him more. How much I love him.
The last couple of years, at times he couldn’t remember what day it is was; on bad days, even who my mom was.
Looks like ol’ Gramps is losing his mind,” he told me on the phone one of the last times I spoke to him, laughing soft.
The engineer with a plan, numbers inhabiting his head, a life to measure, a future to build. How much he added for so many with zero fanfare. Unaware hero status. It can seem so unfair.
Today I remember in his honor what time does not forget.
Time records what is true. I breathe air that moves freely into and out of my lungs, supplies necessary oxygen, feeds my blood, asks for nothing in return, and reminds me love is a choice.
I may not share his DNA, but I am honored to call George my father.
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Photo credits: main image Photo by lauren lulu taylor on Unsplash, all others courtesy of author, Erin Ryan Burdette.
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