I woke up this morning with an anxious knot in my stomache. I scoured my thoughts to try to understand the root cause of such an off-putting feeling first thing in the morning. Thoughts came in and out of my mind and none of them really registered. Until I realized that today marks one year since my father passed away.
I’ve often told people about the physical and emotional reaction I had the morning I found out he had passed away, even before I had heard the news. When I called my brother to see why he had called me the night before, my heart started racing, my breathe became laboured and I started sweating, all before he had even answered the phone. The blood in my veins – the blood that holds my father’s DNA – just knew and it sent me the warning signs before the words left my brother’s mouth on the other end of the phone line.
What amazes me, is that a full year later, my mind still hasn’t settled with the fact that my father is gone forever. It’s like the mind doesn’t really understand – like it makes no sense – that one minute someone is here on earth, and the next minute they are gone. And not gone on a long holiday where you’re pretty sure you will see them sometime in the future, but just gone. This does’t really elicit an emotional reaction – I think my emotions have reckoned with the fact of his departure – but cognitively, I am still confused.
I sometimes get stressed out that he’ll be forgotten. That the years will pass and that I’ll forget about my dad. I find this ironic given the life he led which always weighed on my mind – his health problems, his lifestyle, his poor decisions that I never understood. While he was around, he was always on mind. I was always waiting for the next call from him, from the hospital, from the police. And when he was around, all I wanted to do was forget. And now, that’s my biggest worry.
What I want to remember is that my dad tried his best, I think. As an adult, I came to realize that my dad struggled with many things – depression, addiction, mental health issues – and as an adult I understood the behaviours he exhibited. As a child, I couldn’t understand why he was the way he was, but as an adult, I knew that these were the things he contended with. And he did try his best.
Most importantly, he made it known that he loved me. He made it known he was proud of me and that in his life, my brother and I were his greatest accomplishments. This is what I will choose to never, ever forget.
I am forever walking upon these shores,
Betwixt the sand and the foam,
The high tide will erase my foot-prints,
And the wind will blow away the foam.
But the sea and the shore will remain
Forever.
-Khalil Gibran, 1926.
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