Feeling a little mad, actually
Thursday, February 12, 2009
I’m currently at 31,000 feet in a cramped MD-80 sandwiched between my elbow-position adversaries and with a damp right leg that will most certainly retain both the smell and the stickiness of the orange juice that was spilled on it. This comes after a 3:15…make that 3:30 wake up alarm and a drowsy drive 40 some miles to SFO after which I left my late-term pregnant wife and 2 year old alone for a few days.
I’m leaving them to watch my Dad’s remains be placed into a nook in a mausoleum near what my Aunt assures me is a lovely garden and pond in Florida.
Damn it, I’m mad.
I’m mad at my father for leaving us, I’m furious at the disease that stole him from us. Stole not just him, but memories and shared laughter and tears of joy and sadness and wisdom and humor and even his crankiness. Kubler-Ross would suggest that I’m proceeding through the usual steps of mourning, hell a mediocre therapist would barely expend any brain power to arrive at that little insight.
Worst thing is, it’s true. I know that I’m treading on a fragile surface – externalizing resignation, closure, acceptance. But the truth of the matter is that I want to punch the walls and yell and demand answers from a deity I don’t even believe in to explain why the hell my Dad is gone when so many cruel, evil, mean and worse, suffering people live on? What cosmic justice is there?
None, I suppose.
He was a good man, not a perfect one. There are as many people that will remember him with a smile and a wistful look as will probably grumble about how tough a boss he could be. I think all would recall his profound work ethic and the loyalty he would not only demand but also return. The most frustrating thing about being a teenager was that as strict as we may have thought him he was also fair and I realize now that he strove to keep us from making some of the mistakes he had done. I recall Rio with tremendous fondness, but I was also in that sheltered naivete of youth that acknowledged (then promptly dismissed) the risks of crime and violence that existed all around us. He gave us surprising freedom and trusted us to figure out the right path.
As with anyone you love, the end of their journey always comes to soon. The joy he took from his grandchildren was profound, but brief. The times when we will want seek his council or have his company will be many and I know there will always be a tinge of sadness as we pass each milestone with our kids and feel his absence.
Yeah, I’m a little mad because I don’t get to have my Dad around anymore.
So the clouds pass, the Sierra peaks are covered in snow as I head to Florida. As luck would have it, I have a nearly 4 hour layover. In Chicago.
I wonder if Dad arranged for that little detail…and then I smile.