Father's Day

On this exact date, also Father’s Day, eleven years ago, I watched my father take his last breath.  My family and I were huddled around his bed, as we had been for most of the day. The Beatles were playing quietly on a small boombox nearby when the air seemed to suddenly get thin, and we somehow knew it was almost over. When it finally happened, that moment when we realized he would not exhale, a tremendous amount of feelings flooded my heart and mind; panic, pain, heartbreak, guilt, agony, fear, helplessness, and the instinctual, fleeing thought that if I do something, I might be able to save him. I relived this memory every year on this day, struggling to keep it together while remembering every detail as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. Until last year.

On this exact date, one year ago, on the tenth anniversary of my father’s death, I discovered I was pregnant. As if that day wasn’t heavy enough, as if it hadn’t already been the host of the most life-changing event imaginable, I now had this to deal with. Because I had such a hard time initially accepting my unexpected pregnancy, it felt like a blow, like salt in a gaping wound. I tried to understand the significance of this unlikely coincidence, keeping it close in mind and visiting it often throughout the last year.

It took me the entire year, and not a minute sooner, to realize the meaning, the beautiful lessons here. I finally see the connection, so obvious to me now. I see it in the way Chris looks at Emme, and how her face lights up, smile stretching from one ear to the other, when she sees him. I know that this is how my dad looked at me, how he loved me every moment until his very last. Until Emme was born, I only understood our relationship from my perspective, and when I lost him, I felt as if I lost that relationship and a huge part of myself. But now I see that I can continue to learn about him, and that our relationship can grow and change as my understanding of it changes, eliminating the overwhelming sense of finality associated with his death. 

And then there are the incredible moments when I discover tiny resemblances of him in Emme. When he died, I remember people kindly suggesting that “he is alive in all of us”, but I could never find comfort in it. But with this new life, it is wonderfully heart wrenching to realize that she may just have his nose, or the sweet way she seems to bite her upper lip when she’s really focusing, just like her Grandpa Gary. I can truly see now, that he is, in fact, alive in all of us. And that his memory and presence will continue to grow with our growing families, not fade.

So today, and every Father’s Day that follows, with these exciting new realizations in mind, I will no longer mourn his loss, but celebrate his powerful presence. I will smile at the wonderful, brand new relationship that Chris and Clementine have just begun. I will be confident that the subtle tears I still get every time I hear, and say, the word “dad” are tears of joy, not sadness.  And I will know, with certainty, that he is watching us, and that he is proud of what we have become. And lastly, I will finally let the empty space in my heart, the hollowness that I ardently protected in fear that I would forget him, be filled with new love, and new life.