Significant Calendar Dates

Seven years after he left the world, I still catch myself in moments where it surprises me to remember that my dad is dead.

You know that feeling you get when you are at the top peak of a roller coaster? That feeling you get in your guts when you first start down the other side of the hill? How your stomach flips over and bumps into your heart, your lungs seize up and your head gets swimmy? Well, that is the feeling I get on those occasions, when the realization that he's gone, comes at me as a surprise.

It always takes my breath away.



On July 25, he would have been 56 years old.

I never know what to do on his birthday. I usually spend it alone, driving up and down familiar highways, drinking coffee and listening to music - not knowing where to put all of the awareness that came with losing him; not knowing how to confine my intimate relationship with the emptiness he left behind because it is so vast, it stretches out into the black forever of the universe.

This year, I still did not know how to handle it.

So, on the night before what would have been my father's 56th birthday, I drank an $85.00 bottle of red wine from Washington state, a dirty martini, 2 vodka tonics, and then I had a few shots. I was captivated by a humid summer night, slapped hard on the butt by a hot little Phillipina chick, envied for how I looked wearing a skin tight white skirt and black stilletto heels, and I was the grateful recipient of some easy compliments and empty promises. I found an audience for my most sacred of hopes, and my most haunting fears. I was surrounded by old friends, and new friends, and kind strangers. I slept alone, and woke up more hungover than I have been in years.

This year, I did not try to cope with the heavy grief that settles in on me during what should be another important calendar date in my father's life. Instead, I chose to suppress, ignore, deny, and drown.

Oddly, I don't think I'm any worse off for having done so. I'm learning that grief is just something that will not ever go away. It is not true what they say.

Time does not heal all wounds.