February 6th, 2024 marked 15 years without my dad.
Fifteen.
The word rolls off my tongue so smoothly and yet, it sounds foreign to my own ears.
Fifteen. 15. Fif-teen.
A decade and a half really isn’t so long in the timeline of the world.
And yet… Fifteen years is such a large chunk of time in my world.
And after that much time, I’ve realized that since my dad died, my life has been clearly cleaved into two. A before and an after. Two starkly distinct pieces of the same evolving person. And even though they belong to the same life, it feels as though they won’t ever fully connect. Adjacent puzzle pieces that don’t quite align.
It’s like I’ve lived a thousand lives since my dad died compared to the singular life I lived with him in it.
Before: I was a child, a teenager, a young adult. Part of a nuclear family of 5 with security and happiness and love. Extended family, friends, community as a part of our daily lives. Childhood, adolescence, the beginnings of adulthood. Elementary School, Junior High, High School. A semester of college. So simple and steady and standard.
It’s wild how after 15 years, I still sometimes cling to that person as though I could get her back — get that family, get that life back — if I just remember hard enough. If I can just remember each and every small detail, I think that life is still right at the tips of my fingers.
So close, I could grab it.
(Weren’t we just right there? Weren’t you just here?)
And yet… I often have to put a Hard Stop on these memories when I get too close. They can still be too painful; it can still be so raw.
I can still miss him too much.
After: Everything else.
A break up with Ray — my first love, the person who knew my dad, loved my dad, and was with me when I lost my dad. Ray has had his own demons to conquer and, at first, observing his journey to healing was heartbreaking to witness from a distance. At the time it all devastated me, but in hindsight, the experience helped to eventually set some of my pain free in ways I never imagined.
And then — Another love, another breakup; this one faster. It burned brighter and hotter and fizzled out quicker than it began. It was intense and enthralling, exhausting and draining, and I ended up needing every facet of what that relationship gave to me, both good and bad.
But finally — The love of my life. Landon. What a gift… What a dream. And sent at precisely the right time I needed to begin to heal my heart. I cannot thank my lucky stars enough. And even after 13 years together, he has always been open enough to allow me the ability to feel my grief while never allowing me to drown in it. What a gift.
And then, some more: A graduation from U of I with a Bachelor’s Degree. A move to Spokane. A graduation from EWU with a Master’s Degree. A career I’m 10-years deep in. Our bestest boy Jake. Buying our first home and having all the first-time homeowner and home-improvement questions. Losing Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Jerry and Aunt Marcia. The birth of our sweet Maeve Magnolia.
My god, Maeve. She is truly everything. And my dad would have *adored* her.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that soon, I will be at the apex. The crux. The midway point where I will have reached 19 years without my dad — The same amount of years I had with him. And after that, the scales will always be imbalanced on the wrong side: More time without him than I had the privilege of having with him.
It feels so unfair. This can’t be right. How did I get here so quickly?
(Weren’t you just right here?)
It’s harder yet when I put Maeve into my shoes. She is 4. In just 15 (Fifteen. 15. Fit-teen.) years, she will be 19 years old, the same age I was when I lost my dad. I cannot imagine having only 15 more years with her; Maeve only having 15 more years with Landon or me. It’s so short. Too short. It’s not enough time. That would never be enough time.
And yet… My last 15 years have felt like an eternity.
Time — and grief — are difficult.
This was reiterated to me in the last year when my two best friends lost their dads within 3 months of each other. Both losses were semi-expected from illnesses, although the timing was a surprise for both.
I didn’t realize how much being a source of strength for these two would bring me comfort (Yes! A function I can excel in because I know I have accomplished similar-yet-subjectively-harder undertakings before! And I was younger and less emotionally mature then, so I can definitely handle this now!) while also sometimes catapulting me right back to the numb, foggy-brained college freshman I was, dragging my feet from place to place in an effort just to make an effort through my grief.
What a strange way for my brain to react after 15 years of actively processing my loss.
Grief — and time — are difficult.
I wonder regularly what my dad would be like now. What he would look like. What he would think of the world and American politics and our social climate. I hate that I didn’t really get to know him as an adult, truly only as a child and teenager. If he hadn’t gotten sick, would we have had discussions about what I learned in college and grad school? Or would he have just sat back and mostly observed the conversations around him like he often had in my childhood? He would now be Baka Mike to 3 granddaughters… Would our lives have all unfolded the same way to give him those same 3 beautiful girls? Or would life have worked itself out a little differently with him around? Would he have retired yet or continued working past retirement-age like a lot of folks? Would he have new hobbies or leaned into the ones he already loved as his body slowed down? Where would he have taken my mom on vacation once all us kids were finally out of the house? How would he have handled the loss of his mom and Grandpa Jimmy?
What would he sound like?
It’s now officially been more than 15 years since I’ve heard my dad’s voice and the longer it’s been, the harder it is to come to terms with that. I hate admitting that I’ve forgotten what he sounded like… It feels like a betrayal somehow.
I won’t sugarcoat it — I’m jealous of my friends and family who have videos and recordings of the voices of their dads (alive or in the stars). I wish more than just about anything I had tangible, salvageable, re-playable evidence of my dad I could call on for comfort when I deeply miss him and my emotions are threatening to overtake me.
(Weren’t you just here?)
Unfortunately, I lost my dad in a time right before digital photos and videos and voicemails/memos were readily available. In fact, it was a time of technological transition where I’m sure I actually had quite a lot of photos and videos of him taken on my *fancy* CoolPix digital camera. However, the SD Cards they were stored on have likely since been lost to the annals of time (and the demise of old technology), so the actual footage is probably long gone. We didn’t have a camcorder growing up either, so there aren’t even old home movies on VHS I could get transferred over to a digital file if I wanted to.
One time in 2018, Landon and I were randomly tuned into Root Sports and the 1998 Seattle Mariners “Turn Ahead the Clock Night” game was being rebroadcast. I said to Landon, “No way! I was at that game in the Kingdome with my dad and my brother! I’ve got pictures and souvenirs to prove it!” And as he was prepping dinner from the kitchen, he jokingly called, “See if you can find yourself when the camera pans to the crowd!”
Lo and behold, not 30 seconds later, I saw an 8-year-old me sitting next to my 10-year-old brother and my very-much-alive dad in the stands. I paused the playback, dropped to my knees and sobbed. I rewound and replayed and rewound and replayed that clip over and over. I recorded it on my phone, zoomed in, sent it to my mom and brother and sister. “That’s us! I can’t believe it! That’s us!”
It was. It was actually us.
And, to date, that is the only video (no sound) I have of my dad that shows he was here. That he was mine and he was real and that the whole portion of my life where he was alive wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.
Because honestly, some days, it feels that way. When I am deep in missing him and I look at how different my life is now than the one I had when he left, I question whether or not I imagined the world’s best dad or if he actually existed like I remember.
(I know you were just right here.)
February 6th, 2024 marked 15 years without my dad.
Fifteen. 15. Fif-teen.
Up to this point, I've been nervous to ask for pictures or videos of my dad — or even memories/stories I haven’t heard yet. What if they don’t exist? What if no one shares? Who is going to save room in their mind for those memories when I, his own daughter, don’t even have the brain capacity to store them? I know myself and I am afraid I will wind up so much sadder to ask and get nothing in return than to not posit the inquiry at all.
And yet… If there is anything about my dad you’d like to share with me — big or small, good or bad — I would take any memory at this point.
And if not… Is there anything you would share with my dad about me if you could? If you don’t have a story of him, maybe there is something you would want to tell him about me if you had the opportunity? I don’t know, just trying to think of a way to still feel connected to who he was and who he still is, wherever he may be. <3
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