One more walk around the pond

I was 12 when I lost my Dad. 12 is a far off place now, but as I pass through different milestones in my life 12 comes back in an instant. I have graduated from High school, college, Americorps, I moved across the country and back and now I am getting married. You are back in my heart like the first day you left.

Except this time I am exhausted, I have carried you with me, a small child carrying the weight of his much larger Dad, never resting on the off chance you changed your mind. Or that one day the 875-8335 number would mean something again, that the voice on the other end would be you telling me when you are going to pick me up.

I feel embarrassed at times that I have not fully moved passed your loss, or sometimes I haven’t moved on at all. But you were my source to my spark, the storyteller who could weave a dream into a walk around the pond. The dreamy part of me never took root, it got replaced by loss and duty.

I miss you so much, I wish you could just fill in the blanks of years past. I want the fishing trips, the dunkin donuts, I want you to come out to me. I want to know your story. I want you to have the life that you should have had. I wanted you to visit me in SF how great would that have been? A road trip, baseball game, any of it, all of it.

What can I do to keep you alive in ways that are productive? How can I start over without you and wipe the slate clean? All the pain and grief has left me stuck in my own world/bubble full of static and stasis. I want to know that you are free and happy and I want your pat on my back to let go, let loose and have a great time.

I want forgiveness for my past trespasses and bad actions that stemmed from grief. I want to feel my feet on the floor again, rooted, centered, safe, solid, vibrant. I want to know that I deserve to be happy, healthy and free from suffering. And that suffering here won’t bring you back, won’t show you how much I care. I guess when I was younger I wanted to let you know that I would not go on either. Yes of course I had to go on in my body, but a big part of me died too, a strange allegiance that carried on for too long and now I don’t know how to fix it.

I miss you and wish you well. Maybe if I live my life and days so full it will seem like no time until we meet again.