I Heard it Downtown

One of my creative writing professors joked that when she taught her creative non fiction class in the spring, everybody wrote essays on sex. When she taught it in the winter, everybody wrote about death.

Not knowing this beforehand, I stupidly took her class during the winter. She wasn’t kidding.

I can certainly understand why. Its easy for death to be on the mind during a Columbus Winter, when you drudge around everywhere surrounded by dead plants, and students so cold they perhaps wished they were dead.

But my mind continued to linger on the subject even after the sun began to make special guest appearances, and the temperatures began to flirt with the 50s. Two of my friends at my old school recently lost their fathers, my church congregation lost a member, and my father’s birthday was quickly approaching. My dad died in September of 2006.

I can still remember most of the funeral. The church was at full capacity, packed with friends, family, and dozens of people who I didn’t know at all. I was completely emotionally overwhelmed. I hadn’t begun to make sense of my grief, and only just barely wrapped my head around the magnitude of the situation. To make matters more confusing, I was in the middle of my LDS mission…so there I was, nametag and all, trying to maintain some facade of emotional stoicism.

Nobody really knows what to say at a funeral, but everybody wants to help. I remember scores of well intentioned people coming up to me, giving me hugs, and saying it’ll be okay.

I didn’t know it at the time, but now I’m pretty convinced that just isn’t true. When you lose a parent, especially when you’re still young, I’m not sure its ever okay.

Sure, the intensity of the situation wanes over time. I no longer have the urge to cry whenever Van Morrison starts playing on the radio. I’m able to watch a baseball game without falling apart, even if the Yankees are playing (I still hate ‘em though. Sorry dad). I think I’m naturally a pretty upbeat guy, and this tragedy hasn’t changed that.

But I think the word “okay” seems to imply some sort of return to a previous, injury free state, and that is impossible. I think about my dad nearly every day, and I’m finding that I miss him in new, powerful ways the older I get. My dad will never see me graduate college, never saw me land my first “grown up” job, and won’t see my wedding (or for that matter, even meet anybody I date). He never got to hold Miles, who would have been his first Grandbaby. These are new, powerful hurts that didn’t occur to me when I was a confused nametag-totting 19 year old, but I’m starting to understand now.

I don’t just miss my dad because he will be absent for the rest of my life milestones. My dad was an artist, and the very genesis of my creative ability. I developed a passion for blues and soul music from rummaging through his CD collection. His was a voracious reader, a poet and a writer. I am only now just starting to understand a tiny bit of what he knew. I would give anything to have a few more min with him, if only to discuss music and writing. I didn’t publish my first piece until April of 2007. He never saw it.

It isn’t just sorrow and loss that I feel now though. Death has a way of fundamentally rearranging your priorities and perspective. Death is a crushing reminder of our own fragile mortality. We’re not indestructible, not even when we’re teenagers and know everything. It is a reminder that life is too short to hate, to hold grudges, to remain heartbroken or to be bitter ( and life is also too short to *not* experience those things, because that’s what makes us alive). We don’t want our last interaction with a loved one to be negative.

It can be difficult to reconcile everything. The bleeding may stop, and the cut may heal, but I think I’ll always have a little scar somewhere. I think that’s how it goes. As time goes on, I guess you just learn to reconcile those painful longing feelings with the right perspective. I’ll always miss my old man, and there may be times when I might really need him…but life is too short to be permanently attached to a memory (and one that is likely distorted). My dad certainly wouldn’t want me to mope forever…he’d want me to be happy (and if he saw me moping, he’d prob call me a stinkin’ alcoholic and fart really loud to try and snap me out of it. Larry, Curly and Moe had nothing on my old man)

So you keep struggling with that, and move on from there. Somedays are easier than others…but I don’t think its ever, 100% “Okay”.

Not even in the spring.