I'm Struggling With Yesterday

I need to preface this post with a note I wrote after writing the content. I think it's only fair to warn you that this entry will be self-indulgent. It will meander. I'm sorry for that, but I don't have the will to edit it.

For the past 24 hours, I have been wrangling a topic in my head, and I am struggling with it. I've been trying to figure out how much to tell and attempting to take into consideration who reads my blog. I have debated even posting it, but despite the chatter about shotguns and Tom Cruise, one of my goals with this blog has been to be authentic, so I feel compelled to post. You don't have to read further, but if you do, thank you for allowing me this bit of navel-gazing bullshit.


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My father died yesterday. Well, not yesterday yesterday. But one year ago yesterday. On the day my son turned six months old. I didn't think about my father at all yesterday (there's that word again). I can easily put him and his death out of my mind on the 24th of every month, because my son's life is so much more important to me. Wait...

For a moment there, I almost wrote "because my son's life is so much more important to me and his existence is a big part of the reason I am who I am these days". But that's not true. I am who I am, and I am the mother I am, in part, because of who my father was and because of our relationship. It's difficult to admit that. It's difficult, even a year later, to admit that he still lives on inside me, every day, within nearly every decision I make.

My father was an asshole. Well, not all the time. At his worst, he was an asshole. At his best, he was mildly annoying and occasionally funny. I saw more humor in him as we both grew older. I found less in common with him than ever, but my voice was stronger, and somehow, arguing strengthened our bond. It made it easier for me to talk to him on the phone, to have a conversation with him... to be his daughter. Disagreeing with him made him like me more.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of my father, and I hated him. He had this look. It was a steely, Dirty Harry glare, magnified by his uniform: a blue chambray work shirt, Levi 501's and black, steel-toed biker boots. With his ever-present pipe clenched between his teeth, he would give someone that look, and in a split-second, he made it clear they weren't worth the air they were breathing. He backed up those looks with verbal jabs and cuts. He was a nasty drunk -- and drunk was a pretty common state of being for him -- and if pressed too far, his instinct was to run. Sometimes he'd leave for days or even a week. I still don't cope well in the face of uncertainty because of him.

But seven years ago, my father was diagnosed with lymphoma. It changed us just a bit. He used to joke that he was dying. I used to joke back that we all are. We debated, we cajoled, and we talked. Then last year, he called me just before Christmas to tell me he really was dying. Leukemia. I already knew. My brother had told me. Before my father called, I'd already decided to be stoic, because my dad hated emotion. But at the end of the call, my voice cracked when I said, "I love you, Dad." He laughed uncomfortably, then he said, "I love you, too," and we hung up.

The last time he'd said that to me was nine years earlier at my first wedding. The photographer made him do it. He told my father to put his arms around me and tell me he loved me. The photographer was all about "the shot". He didn't know what he was stepping in; he had no sense of history. He didn't know I'd left home in the midst of a fight with my father when I was only 19. He had no idea our relationship was not cozy. But my father put his arms around me, and I held my breath. His voice wavered on the edge of tears when he said, "I love you." Later that night, he danced with me at my request ("no photographer," he insisted), and he told me how proud he was of me. How impressed he was with the decisions I'd made in my life, how smart I was, and how much he admired me.

So last year, a couple weeks after Christmas, we flew to Arizona to spend time with my dad. It was impossible to talk to him. In hindsight, I recognize he was dying and afraid. But he was such an asshole to me that week that I never gave him a hug goodbye, and aside from a limping dialog about astro turf, we never spoke again. The last time I saw him, I interrupted his movie to say goodnight to him. He was watching "A Prairie Home Companion". He said not a word, but gave me that glare, then he turned back to the TV. And I hated him again. Just like that, the peace we'd brokered was gone.

I was in a bad place last year when my dad died. I was already mired by depression over our move to Minnesota and was still in the throes of postpartum. My father's death felt like a betrayal by the universe -- yet another desertion -- in the midst of an already deep well of heartache. I lashed out at my mother for not protecting us from him when we were kids. I screamed at my husband, because... well... because he was there. I hugged my little boy tighter and cried, because we'd given him such a lousy first Christmas. But I didn't cry for my father. Not once.

I am an asshole when I am at my worst. I suspect there are people who would attest that when I am at my best, I am mildly annoying and occasionally funny. But. I am not my father. I am a doting mother. I am a generous friend. I am a loyal wife, and my husband would have to burn the house down around my feet to make me leave. I am all of those things, because my father was not. He lives on as a magnificent example of how not to be, and he is my Bible in that regard. For that, I am grateful. For that, and just because I am his daughter and it is the curse of children to love their parents, I love him. But not yesterday. Yesterday was my day, and it always will be.