He came to visit in early May. We worked in my yard, he watched my kids so my husband and I could go out for his birthday and we went grocery shopping one last time. On May 30th at around 10:30 in the morning my husband called me from my school’s parking lot. He was there to pick me up. My dad died. I collapsed in front of my students and wept. Two fourteen-year-old girls picked me up off the floor and walked me out of my school. My dad was dead. I couldn’t comprehend it. Even now I can’t. I laid on my bathroom floor sobbing. I knew what killed him, no one had to tell me. It didn’t matter how he died all that mattered to me was that he was gone. Our society is quick to call people like my dad ‘junkies’ or say ‘it was their choice to do drugs and they don’t deserve to be saved.’ It was my dad’s choice but he was more than an addict like so many are. He was loved. He was wanted. He was needed. I needed him.
I forgave him for that small part of who he was and opened my heart to everything else I knew was there. I had six years with him from the time he was released from prison to the time heroin took him from me. Six years of grocery store trips, long talks about life, politics, and his childhood memories. Six years of watching him transform from a felon to a grandfather. Six years but it wasn’t enough. I still long to hear him say ‘hey sweetheart how ya doing.’ I would relive all the hurt again for one more day with him. I am thankful every day for those six years and angry every day there were only six. I am thankful my heart chose forgiveness because it opened a door that gave my brothers and me our dad back. We buried him on a Wednesday in June to the song ‘Fishing in the Sky.’ I haven’t been able to listen to that song since. The cemetery is a mile from my house and every time we drive by Nolan says, ‘That’s where Pops is in the blue box.’ For the first several months, whenever we would drive by, Nolan would tell me to show him my eyes because he knew I would be crying.
The emotions come in waves now. There are moments when my brain allows me to forget he’s gone and in those spilt seconds I will think about something I need to say to him. But reality is harsh and won’t let me linger. One second I am whole again and the next my heart returns to its new version, the version that is broken. I miss my dad every day. He has been gone less than a year and he has already missed so much. Nolan had open-heart surgery and recovered quickly. My youngest, Caleb, will sometimes pick-up my dad’s picture and say ‘Papa Papa.’ My dad couldn’t wait for Caleb to be big enough to play with him and Nolan. On his calendar he had written on June 21st he was going to take Caleb for a walk in our woods. June 21st I turned 34. He missed the Cowboys making the playoffs. He would have been so excited about that. He has missed so much and he is missed so much. My dad was an addict but he was so much more than that to me.”
