dear old dad

The past few days are significant in my life.

One is my wedding anniversary - it was twelve years ago I married my sweetheart and its been quite a ride ever since...

And the very next day is the day my father died. We were married ten years after he died and by now of course, by deduction - he's been gone twenty two years. He's been gone twice as long as I knew him.

He had just started a vacation before accepting a new position at work. His new job would require him to travel the world giving presentations and he would be gone a lot more - but it also would mean more money than we'd ever have (though we still wouldn't be rich) and maybe the opportunity for us to travel with him. My older sisters were both leaving the house and it would be just the three of us - mom and dad and me. We'd had a taste of it in the previous summer when we spent our first vacation without my sisters. We'd taken the train to the mountains and it was so great having that time with my parents. It was there that my father took me aside in a bookstore and told me he'd buy me the book "Jonathon Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach if I promised him I would read it. He wasn't much for giving gifts so I said - yes! of course! and read it that night. When he asked me about it later - I said I liked it. But I didn't really. I mean, it was a book about a seagull wanting to fly higher and faster than anyone else. Who cares? Its a seagull. He smiled knowingly at me (he was always doing that) and didn't say anything. I knew he knew - I didn't get it.

Then February came. He was up early that morning pacing the house, spending a lot of time at each window, just looking. Just looking. I don't remember if I ate breakfast, if I kissed him goodbye, if I brushed my hair. I don't remember.

He wasn't feeling good that morning, I guess. I've heard. He went out to our farm with my mother and my sister's boyfriend, Dennis. I'm not sure what my father was doing out there in February - but he just liked being there. My mother says the tractor had overheated out in the field and he was swearing. He did that. I do that too. He said he'd need to go back to the house to get water and she pointed out that it had rained and there was some rainfall in an old bucket by the fence. He was in the middle of an angry sentence about the water when he fell, straight as a board. My mother was just feet away and ran to him. She was screaming for Dennis and trying to get my father to talk to her. He didn't. He was already gone.

I can't imagine what the next hours were like for my mother. I know that Dennis ran miles to the nearest neighbours house - years before cell phones. And I know that the police arrived and would not let my mother leave to tell us. I know that since my father was a fireman and the call had gone out on the fire phone, many people in town knew long before I did. Some of their friends went to collect my sisters - one from high school, one from college in a neighbouring city. And I sat at school.

Maybe I did my work, maybe I stared out the window. I probably played at recess. I ate some lunch. I flirted with boys. I kicked a soccer ball. I wrote a quiz. I spent my last moments of innocence completely unaware how reality lurked just outside...

Afterschool, in typical fashion, my best friend walked home with me. As we walked up to the house, my sister ran out and asked her to leave. Her face was tear streaked and red and I figured something had gone wrong with her and Dennis. Stupid sister. I said goodbye to my friend and she left.

I walked into the house into the hushed room where only the occasional sob broke the painful silence. I didn't look around but I knew immediately who was missing. And I felt sick to my stomach. My mother was at the end of the couch and she reached her hands out. I slowly walked over to her and sat on her lap and she said: Nikki, Daddy's dead.

I hugged my mother calmly, told her it would be ok and then I walked away into my room and promptly went crazy.

I don't really remember much past that except slices of images. I think I wandered around the house wailing. I went outside and they tried to get me back in. I finally snuck away from them all, found his dirty farm cap and crawled into the doghouse with my father's dog. It took them awhile to find me - and it was one of my mother's friends who finally peeked in to see me curled up with the dog. I reluctantly came out and spent the rest of the evening in front of the tv, sedated by the familiarity of Three's Company. A doctor came by to examine me and I told him I wanted to talk to someone my own age.

My whole world changed in that day. My whole future in that instant was set in a different motion. The next years were difficult - more than difficult...heart wrenching and depressing and cold.

I spent much of my teenage years in drama rehearsals and working and studying and more drama rehearsals. I kept every minute of my day busy so that I couldn't crawl into a hole and cry. I set my father up on a pedestal and created this unrealistic version of who he was and I spent my teenage years dreaming about what life might have been. No matter how much I wrote about it, talked about it, dreamt about it - the pain from losing him didn't go away. It festered - because I never actually faced it.

I picked up "Jonathon Livingston Seagull" one day and randomly opened it. "You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self and nothing can stand in your way!"...and I finally knew what my father had been trying to tell me. It made me brave. It made me stand proudly in my unique shoes.

And then one fateful day - I met K. Something about him made me free to really talk about the pain I felt in losing my father. He was so giving and so honest. When I talked to him, the weight I had carried all those years lifted. He carried some of the burden for me willingly, lovingly - and I finally started to heal.

So - it was fitting when nearly ten years to the day, I married him. We picked that day out of defiance. February had been so bleak for so many years - I was determined to have a happy anniversary in it too. And the next part of my life began...