For many people today is riddled with so many different emotions.
It feels particularly thick for me today.
I loved my father. I was his princess.
He died on my 38th birthday of the same cancer that killed my mother.
The last time I saw him alive was three months prior.
I’m not sure if it was dehydration, elevated calcium levels from his deteriorating bones, or some other factor but he was different.
It seemed impossible to have a normal conversation. To speak of life in the manner I longed for. Instead he spoke of his time in the Vietnam War. Of seemingly nonsensical topics. Of right wing government conspiracies.
One afternoon in a rare moment of his wakefulness, two of his friends came to visit. I wasn’t happy about sharing him, as his new wife was already constantly present. Never allowing us a moment alone.
As the three men spoke the conversation began to take on a distinctly racist tone and topic. In that moment the curtain was pulled back and I saw the truth behind his love of Civil War reenactment. It wasn’t about “playing Yankees and Rebels”. It was about supporting The Lost Cause.
I don’t remember exactly what was said between the three men. I just remember loudly declaring “Well I’m not going to sit here and listen to this BULLSHIT,” and leaving the room.
What could I do? If this is how they thought, how they decided to converse on my father’s deathbed, there wasn’t a damn thing I was going to say to change them in that moment. All I could do was stand up for myself.
It’s painful to write this. To relive in words a memory that’s replayed in my mind a hundred times since that day. To put into writing that this is one of my final memories of my father.
The man that taught me to love nature. The man I would follow around his vegetable garden. Ride in the lawnmower with. Go canoeing with. Go fishing with.
The man who would take me to garage sales on Saturday mornings and then to breakfast at the grocery store diner.
The man who picked me up in his truck after the explosive end to an unhealthy relationship where I lost myself at an age when I should have been finding myself.
The man that would lead me to Taoism and unbeknownst to him started me on the spiritual path I still walk today.
The man that walked me down the aisle when I married my wife.
I loved my father and I still do. Sometimes love is complicated. Especially when our last memories are ones that hurt.