Dad

I started the day remembering a man who left this life far too soon, and finished it realizing my sons are among the desensitized youth of today. It's been a 'wide-spectrum' kind of day.

Years have flown by since I sat in a sterile hospital room with my family around my father's bed. His last breaths hitching, causing us all to tense and hold our own breath; the antiseptic smell, the sound of equipment beeping, wanting his suffering to end, but not wanting him to leave us. It all seems like just days ago.

Time is a funny thing, even more so when memories enter the picture. Other than the general knowledge that days go by, we age, our children grow; there really is no discernible gauge with which to actually feel how much time has passed aside from those things. Sometimes all that seems to keep things right side up are my two feet planted on the ground. There are things, mostly too painful, that I don't like reliving through recollection, because the difficulty in reconciling time that has passed to the here and now is way too difficult.

In a situation when the memories recalled are related to or about someone who has left your life (either by death or dissolution of relationship), even the good times are bittersweet to think about. Twenty years later, I still wonder what life would be like if my father were still alive. I love reminiscing about our time with him, but there's always an underlying tone of regret. We all feel it. It is hard to avoid...impossible even.

Being able to replace, or at the least overshadow that sadness with a sense of gratitude for the capacity to hold snippets of those moments for as long as my mind allows is the only way I have managed to keep the highest level of happy contained within them. Well, that, and sharing the memories as often as possible with others; especially those who were part of them.

I miss my father's voice, his laugh, his shiny, balding head, but I miss his presence most of all. I also remember that it is because of all of those things, that I truly appreciate the people in my life today. The only thing that would be worse than losing him, is having never known him at all.