It's been one year and about 11 hours since my Dad passed away. So much has changed in the past year for me. I made the life-changing decision to get out of the Air Force and move to my dream city of Chicago. While my dream city has not been meeting expectations, I know that it will once I've given myself enough time to grieve the loss of one life and the beginnings of another one.
I know that once I get over the pain of missing John the way I do now, it will become more exciting to be here. I know that once I start my new job, once my movers stop fucking up and actually deliver my household goods...once I'm able to establish a routine...that's when things will start to look up for me and I'll feel less cynical, and more hopeful.
I'll stop missing my Mom the way I do now, wishing that she were still here with me in Chicago, helping me battle the big city's efforts to thwart my happiness with bad traffic, rude people, and long lines. But that will take time, too. It's been a day since she's left to go back to her home in Florida, and I do wish she were here with me, especially on the one year anniversary of the death of the greatest man I've ever known and the love of her life. How it would be nice to be together and grieve together, for a pain that only the other person truly understands. And even though I say that, I don't understand the extent of her grief the way she does, and maybe she doesn't understand mine completely, either; but the pain and loss is for the same person, the same person who we loved so very much and lost before we ever thought we would.
Would he be proud of me now? Proud of my big dreams, proud of my paycheck, proud of my relationship with someone who is so good and so kind to me, proud of the woman I've become? Would he be disappointed in me for leaving my Air Force dreams to pursue more philosophical ones? I think he would be proud of me. I know he would be; my father was a great man, who could be so stubborn and set in his ways at times, but loved me no matter what I did and put me on a pedestal I did not deserve to rest upon.
It's been one year and eleven hours and fifteen minutes, but the pain is no less sharp. The memory of the hospital is no less poignant, the sadness is not watered down for me yet by time. I've been told that the loss of a parent is something you may never get over, something that hurts forever for the rest of your life. Although I can turn the pain down by distracting myself, and I can run away from how much it hurts, it never really goes away. The wishing to share life's moments with my father never stops; I pray that he's watching from a better place so that at least I can have some hope that he does see what I want him to see, and knows that he's still on my mind, on my heart, that the pain has not ceased.
I could hardly bear how much it hurt to watch Donna and her father doing their father-daughter dance at her wedding. Knowing that that was a moment I would never get to experience made me feel heartbroken and lost in a way no one else in the room could have imagined at that moment. Those are the wantings and the longings that will never go away; those are the moments that I've been denied, along with my father, the rest of my life. I know everything happens the way it is meant to and I cannot be resentful; but no one ever said that I couldn't be sad and continue to mourn those losses that have already passed and the ones that are waiting to happen. I'm jealous of those who get to experience those precious, amazing moments with their fathers; not jealous in a vindictive way, but just longing with the pain of not having the chance to experience that myself.
It's been one year, 11 hours, and 20 minutes. The pain does not stop. I think I'm a changed person since my father died.
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