OK, so here is one of my rare "personal" posts, where I drop the snark for a second and forget about new Madonna videos and songs on shuffle. I know I made some of you cry when I wrote about my father on the eighth anniversary of his death, and again I don't write these things to garner sympathy, but I just feel the need to let it out, let some of my thoughts loose. That's why I blog.
Let's rewind a couple weeks: June 15th, 2008. I worked that day, which is nothing unusual, and about halfway through the workday I just got angry and annoyed. I didn't know why, for some stupid reason I didn't connect the dots that any dimwit could. It was Father Day, and guess who still doesn't have a daddy? I felt the lowest I had for a while, and it wasn't until a few days later someone else figured it out. It's like I tried to mentally guard myself, and it didn't work.
How does one cope with the loss of a father at age sixteen? It colors my entire being, whether that's right or wrong. At an age when most dads are teaching their sons how to drive, my father was thinner than I had ever seen him; wisps of his dark hair all the chemo had left him with; helplessly confined to a bed with a catheter. He had less than half his upper jaw, his right eye cover with a patch, the painkillers making him think Boy George had visited him in the hospital. Seeing the man who was my hero reduced to this was shattering.
A man at church asked me if I was angry with God for letting this happen, and I wasn't. I was full of self-righteous anger at those who I felt deserved the blame: those who had given a smoker's cancer to a man who never smoked. My mother, his mother, his coworkers, how dare they leave me fatherless? Maybe this anger was improperly directed, but it has kept me from picking up the habit. I can't say the same for my mother, who after many years away returned to that smoky addiction a few years after my dad passed.
But that is only a tiny wedge of the pie chart of ways his death affected me. I don't have a male figure in my life I can talk about the important things in my life. When I came out to my mother, one of her first reactions was "I don't know how your dad would have handled this" To be honest, neither do I. Aunt Laura said that she doesn't really know what his position on gays was, but she does know he loved his kids. And I know that, I really do know that. But I want to be able to tell him, ask him for advice, ask him what I should do. Should I stay at my job? Should I try for college? He worked full time and took classes, he would have advice on how to make that work. And relationships, I don't have many sane peoples to discuss them with, and no males at all. I was at the earliest moments of coming to terms with my sexuality when he was snatched from us, and I know for a fact his death pushed me into a two-plus year funk that created a strange sideways growth; a confused stagnation. Emotionally, intellectually and sexually, it took a long time for me to move past where I was at sixteen, there are still days when I feel like that same fat dumpy kid.
In closing, I didn't forget it was Father's Day, I stopped to see my Pappy after work for the very reason that it was Father's Day. I just forgot that Father's Day is not a day I will truly be happy on for many years, maybe not even once I have children of my own. One doesn't forget, even when you think you do.
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