In the mists of darkness

It has been almost two and a half months since my father's passing, and I am still struggling to find my bearings in this world without him. Despite his declining health over the last five years, I always held out hope that he would start to get better. I wanted so desperately for my presence and the presence of my children to provide the magic antidote that would help him recover. In his last few months, I visited him nearly everyday. I was endlessly frustrated by the inability to fix the problem and make things better, because I'm a problem solver and I like to make things right. I knew my father loved children, and I hoped my children being near would give him a reason to fight to get better. In the end, his body was too tired and his spirit longed to return Home, even the promise of my brother moving back couldn't keep him here in his suffering any longer.

While I am happy his suffering and misery has ended, there is a gaping hole in my life and a grief that knows no bounds and no end. My father was a constant in my life. No matter what I did, he always accepted me and loved me unconditionally. My father taught me to love music and science, to seek for the solutions to problems using the resources I had available to me, and to not be constrained by the usual methods of doing things. I was forever his little girl, even to his dying day. In his last days, before he lost the ability to speak, my mother told me he asked, at 5:00 am, "Where's my little girl?" How I wish I could have been there with him at that moment to answer, "Right here, Daddy." The frail, sick old man before me in those last days was not the reality of the father I knew. My father never stopped being the strong man who could fix just about anything in my eyes. Always the one to lend a helping hand, my father helped nearly every one who asked him, even those who were "too busy" to help him when he needed help in return. I know he wasn't perfect, no one is, but my father was honest, hard working, and kind, and will always be the first person I looked up to.

One of the things I find most saddening, is that, for spending nearly his whole life in one little community, dying where he was born, raised, and raised his own family, his death seems largely unnoticed in the community at large. Even amongst his own family, few of the extended family ever really got to know him. Even fewer of his neighbors and people in the area really knew him. The ones who did know him almost seemed to want to pretend they didn't. Knowing this, I find the condolences of many of these people to be rather hollow. I guess that's why he didn't want a funeral, just military rights at his grave. He never could stand the hypocrisy of people who condemned a person during his lifetime then sang his praises at his death. I guess I got that from him, too.

So, as I make my way through these endless mists in a forever darkness, attempting to recapture a sense of myself and my life, I think of my daddy with the profound, unwavering love of a child. The promises of being united with him in the next life seem to do little to alleviate the pain I feel and the longing to be with him now in this life. I try to be strong for my children, for my mother, and for my brother, but the pain and the sorrow and the tears are always there just waiting to burst forth. Some days are better than others. I'm trying to be the person he saw me as, the person he would want me to be. I know he would want me to be happy, and so I try. I'm trying to instill in my children a love for a man they had really only known for the last year, a man brought down with the weight of ongoing illness. I'm trying to give them a sense of the man he was before he got sick. He is always in my heart, and I will cherish his memory forever.