A year and a bit on from my father's death, I sometimes think of him as someone I used to know.
It's a thought I don't like to entertain. We prefer to think of them as here, in some way. Wherever you move, so too does the spirit of the ones we have lost. Of course this is true, because they exist in our memory. At times I recall his feet tapping in the air to music, or his hands drawing mud maps of gardens and architecture or swapping the lens on his camera. They are fleeting, hapless things. There's an irony as the spell check turns 'fleeting' to 'deleting' - my brain will rid some memory to make way for new, and eventually my father will become like digital rot, and then gone, erased from the hard drives of everyone that knew him.
This thought comes to me most when I'm driving down long and open stretches of road. It's like a rope tugging him backwards and me forwards so that the tangled cord in between becomes frayed and ready to snap. The more I move into the future, the less of the same space we occupy. I can't tug on the rope because I know it's futile, and that I'll be forcing some version of him that isn't real.
When once I missed him so much it ached, the pain of loss stretching into sharp days, now the loss is dull, soft, shorter lived. Unless I'm with people who bring him vividly to life - mother, mainly - the thoughts of him rise and pop, and disappear quickly, painlessly. He is someone I used to know, a father I used to have.
But then, he is present suddenly. Enjoying a sweet and juicy red apple yesterday, just like he did, almost every day of his life, I ate the whole thing, core and all, the marzipan taste of the pips tugging at the rope.
With Love,
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We all experience loss differently. You haven't lost him. The best parts of him, those vivid memories, are with you. He's with you.
I think I'm more morbid. The ones I've lost are with me like an ache. I can't tell people because it's time to move on, but these are like shadows in my life. Truly a loss. My mother, my brother, my sister. I'm not depressed, although it sounds like that, but I'll never be happy without restraint again.
A cousin told me when I was a little bit of a child that I was far too serious. I think that may be true :))
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That's right, because spirits can't travel by car or fly through the air.
The pain of losing my dad is still in my memory.
I see his picture and I just get comfort from the promises found in the holy book that the dead will rise again, that's promise is faith strengthening.
And I believe so much on it.
I hope we all find solace in that promise
I'm sorry for your loss, and glad you have a way to find comfort.
Memories are such a fickle thing. I have yet to find a method to retain then, especially the sensations around the. Pictures help, so does taste - like that apple that you do beautifully described, loved that! -, smells, too. But everything eventually fades. If you find a recipe for memory preservation, let me know, please.
Until then, that was a beautiful post. Thank you for sharing it!
Definitely music helps! They say that with Alzheimer's patients - they'll come alive to loved tunes.
Maybe it's because you moved. It's been 5 years and I've never felt that. And because I speak of him often still, the people around me still do too. I found that people wouldn't speak of him, so I did, often, every day.
When the homeschool mom lost her husband suddenly in July, I spoke to her about this, that people would not talk about him. And that she and the family should do so, often, keep his stories alive.
Talking about him definitely helps. I guess I've been so preoccupied, distracted and busy that I don't get time to think about him much...
Here, it’s hard not to. He’s invested in every inch of this place….