Changing Seasons

The changing of the seasons hit me most hard. I feel my loss and recognize that another season has missed him. I think, because of this, I appreciate the changes all the more.

Today I sat in the back pasture wearing a tank top and jeans and feeling the warm sun on my arms. I let the horses out and they grazed feet from me. Three chickens decided to check on me and wandered close, no doubt investigating to see if I had food to spare. I smelled grass and manure and the heat of horses. I looked at all the memories we have shared these past three years in this pasture. I gazed at the dead tree stump in which a bobcat ate one of our first ducks on. The very same stump that the kids think is their mission to use rusty old shovels to pulverize it into a million splintery pieces. As I watch, a squirrel runs diagonally around it, life ever present.

This is the pasture where I encouraged my mom to get on Starr, without a halter or saddle. Mere seconds later, this is the pasture where I watched Starr run off with my 67 year old mother.

Our daughter took her first fall off of her Pony here.

How many times have I watched the children playing king of the mountain on our manure pile? How many times have I yelled, "At least put some shoes on if you are up there!?"

My dad is missing the very simplest of moments. I am missing him here. With us. Watching how pleased he would be, seeing him play with our kids.

I haven't dreamed about him in so long. I haven't 'felt' his presence. I do try and have faith that he is here but I wish for signs. I take comfort in believing that the signs are in the details of everyday life. The constant kisses from Augie, the sound of a flock of chickens running after you, the hawk cry that our daughter does to perfection, a tail wagging upon my arrival, the whinny from a horse demanding it is time to bring them in, and the feeling of pride when watching our son figure out a brain teaser puzzle. Life is all around me, and, by golly, I must take that as my sign to be strong and remain appreciative.

Because it is so very fleeting.

Dream

I had a dream a few nights ago about my dad. I just remember him standing 'there' and I can't even remember where 'there' was. I wish I would have wrote it down the minute I woke up, but I didn't and now I have lost the memory.

He has been on my mind a lot, always never far from me.

This week I talked aloud about his death to my new friends at Augie's speech class and even though I felt a lump, I didn't tear up. I consider this a victory and a turning point in my evolution through this grief.

I feel like I am starting to lose him and now want to write all the little details about him before they become lost.

I miss his bear hugs and hearty greetings.

I miss him calling me Az.

I miss him playing card games with me.

I miss him making me iceberg lettuce salads with ranch dressing, crushed saltines, tomatoes, and cheddar cheese.

I miss his eager enthusiasm towards animals and rafting and his garden.

What an absolute tragedy losing him has been for me. His death has made me stronger and more appreciative of family and friends. But it has also damaged me. Aged me. Saddened me. My father's death has made me more worried and desperate that I will be given another loss before I have healed. I imagine a world with him in it and realize that I will never come close to living that life again. I am not welcome at his home, I am not a part of his extended family. My children will never receive gifts from his garden or be taken down the river on a river rafting trip. They will never golf with him or be spoiled by him like he spoiled Kate--trips to time shares and swimming in a hot spring, trip to Disneyland, gifted expensive toys that we couldn't afford like a Harry Potter Lego set or remote controlled cars.

My loss is deep and now an undercurrent of who I am.

Remote Controlled Cars

My dad bought these cars for Kate, probably 8-10 years ago. I remember him saying "You can't just have one car. You always have to have two" as we went out to a local Radio Shack and picked them out. He insisted that we needed one that went fast and one to offroad with. At the time, I was shocked at their $50 price tag and surprised that my dad was spending $100 on toy cars.

I am now so grateful that I kept them and that my little kids can play with them. Today I told them about how Grandpa John bought these for them to play with. I hope that they can feel or at least have one more story of who my dad was, through these cars.

He would have been tickled to see them playing with them and probably would have ran out to buy a third for Augie. He would have loved playing cars with them because he was that kind of grandparent.

Imagine

Kate, my oldest child, has declared that she wants to be a doctor. My dad would be so proud of his granddaughter. He was always proud of her and I wish he were alive to see her coming into her own person, to see her on her own path.

It is funny how life works out. I had Kate as an eighteen year old community college student teenager. I am certain he was shocked, disappointed, afraid, and even angry. He never told me these feelings, but I am sure he felt them. He watched me move in with my daughter's father, leave him, get engaged to another man, leave this man, struggle 8 years through college, work nights as a waitress, and probably worried the entire time about how she and I would turn out.

He never told me he was worried. But, boy, the tears he shed when I graduated first from community college and then again from a University and then again from my master's program---well, those told me how proud he was of me. I am so thankful that he was able to see my accomplishments. See me get married (finally!) and work as a teacher and have more children. He was able to hear that his granddaughter was a straight A student and that she joined various teams and was brave and coordinated and thoughtful.

He loved us both. And he laughed heartily at the energy my second child possessed. She was a different cloth entirely and he enjoyed her zest.

I only wish he could have seen more. Lived and died with the peace of seeing how it all unfolds. Seeing all of his grandchildren get educations and begin their lives. It pains me that he didn't see more.

Despite this...with a deep breath...

I must remember that he saw enough. He saw my graduation and financial independence. He saw my marriage and glimpses of a future life with my hardworking husband and abundance of children. He got to see a future for me that I imagine entailed my new roomier home (he left off with 5 people in a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home) and Kate attending college and my 'zesty' children growing up.

I imagine he saw my smiles and much peace around me.

Holidays

Oh my, the holidays and feelings of missing my dad hit me at the most unexpected times. Tonight I was at the salon getting my hair colored and cut, when tears began forming in my eyes.

There I am, sitting in the chair with my head bent back into the sink, stylist scrubbing the dye out--and I began thinking of him and how I can't believe he is gone and how I miss him and how horrid life can be without him.

The stylist said, "Are you doing okay? Just zoning out?" and I cleared my throat and with a chirpy voice replied, "Yes, just relaxing!"

What can I say? Sometimes the pain surprises me on how close it is to the surface.

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In other news, this is the first year I didn't send a Christmas card to his wife and her daughters. I may choose to take the high road and send one, but it didn't go out with all of the others. I am so disappointed in how she has treated our family (last year sent one DVD--Smurf's movie for Christmas) and her lack of awareness. My dad died having bought the land she lives on, leaving a time share, and stocks, and car...and she sent one DVD to his grandchildren.

She isn't a generous person, and that hurts. She isn't an attentive person, and that hurts. Some younger child version of myself finds surprise that there are "grown ups" out there who can be so thoughtless. I sometimes get trapped in thinking that as people age, they evolve and grow and become better extensions of themselves.

She has taught me otherwise.

November 1st

Today is my Dad's birthday. To celebrate this occassion I try to cook foods that were meaningful or remind me of my dad. The foods give me a way to introduce the kids to him and a way that they can have memories of him. Last year we went with his favorite meal--or so he told me weeks before he died--King crab and steak. This year I paired the meals down and made crab salads for lunch and then we went out to a new restaurant in town called Gobble. One of the few questions I asked him while we were preparing for his death was what his favorite holiday was. He paused and then said that it was Thanksgiving and so I figured that a Thanksgiving themed restaurant was the way to celebrate. The food was ehhh and on the salty side, but my dinner seemed fitting as it reminded me of the Thanksgiving dinners I ate at his home. Dinners that were okay but nothing interesting or on the cusp of culinary brilliance. I remember one Thanksgiving where he served canned peas. Shudder.

On our drive home the kids and I had a nice discussion about Grandpa John. How much he loved them and planned to take them to Disneyland and how he enjoyed taking walks through the woods with Georgia and picking vegetables in his garden. I told them how he never once turned me down for a board or card game and how he loved all animals and treated them with kindness. Theo replied, "Me miss him" and Georgia wanted to know the details of when and where he died. I didn't think I would be having a discussion about morturary's or cremation with preschoolers but it came up about where his body was now and why we can't visit him.

Theo said, "Me sad."

Me too, buddy. Me too.

Tonight we lit our Christmas lights in honor of him. Kind of like birthday candles for a man who would have been sixty eight years old.

Cheers to the man who took me golfing on Pebble Beach, taught me to drive a stick at age thirteen, and loved me so much that tears leaked from his eyes when he saw me. I love you Dad.

Roots

Today I was reading Facebook and came across a post by Linda, my dad's youngest sister. She posted a picture of her spider plant and how it is over twenty years old. Immediately, tears pricked my eyes and I felt a twist in my belly as I remembered the plants my dad had.

And, how odd it is that I miss his plants.

As time goes by, a feel less and less connected to him and more desperate for the things he may have touched. His books (Karen gave those away), his clothes (donated), his stuff. His lifetime of stuff that I most likely will never see again.

I don't know what is more cruel--his quick death or the complete abandonment of his wife who promised him that our family would always be her family. My kids lost their grandfather but I lost my dad and the promise of seeing and touching his life, if only with him gone.

I could have at least pretended that he was still with me.