Here's what I do want to write about. I've been mulling this over in my head for days, trying to decide if I wanted to put it out there or not, and this post will be the result...if it manages to come out slightly more coherently than it sounds in my head. Probably not.
Our relationships with our parents are complicated ones. As children they seem perfect to us, untouchable, never doubted. As we become teenagers they are the opposite; disparaged, mocked and ridiculed. I won't even touch on what manifests as we reach adulthood. No, I'm not passing judgement on anybody else's relationship with their parents...this is my blog and I'm talking about me.
My childhood with my Daddy was a love story. He was my everything, and I always thought he could do no wrong. In a way he only disappointed me once. Only once.
On May 2nd 1993 my Daddy died, in the garage of our home, alone. I found him there. I called the ambulance. I did everything they said. I screamed to God, the neighbours, and anyone who would listen; but he died anyways. It was five days before my fifteenth birthday.
The problem with this, is that in those twenty odd minutes while I waited for the ambulance, I lost nearly all the good memories I had. They were buried beneath anger, betrayal and death.
Like any good girl I've had therapy; years of it. So I built my memory palace [mine is more of a cottage but still] and I filled it with information, facts...stuff. I have a 'Daddy' room; over the years I've cataloged and filed away every image, story detail, sense memory, everything. I have it all. It fills rows of books, all colours, textures, scents. If you were to come into the room it would seem like a shrine. It is in many ways.
Except one. There's one memory that doesn't stay on any shelf I put it one. Visually it's a box, not a book and if you made the mistake of opening it, its' howls and screeches knock everything else down.
I hate that damn box. I only open it one night a year. Thursday will be that night.
But this year, the twentieth year he's been gone from me I have an unexpected weapon. Three days ago I received a very unexpected gift from a childhood friend. Her father had been digitising their home movies and she sent me one so I could see how young we all were. It was filmed in 1988 and the quality wasn't the best, but suddenly, as I was halfheartedly watching, there was my father. In all his stupid fisherman's hat, too short shorts glory. I HEARD HIS VOICE. I hadn't heard that voice in twenty years. Twenty years.
East Hill Farm 1988
This girl has no idea how precious those three seconds were to me. To hear a voice that I had long forgotten, that I never expected to hear again. Just wow.
Oh My Daddy. Not a day goes by that I don't think of you and wonder, 'What if?'
Thank you for reading my long and rambling post. So sorry if I offended or upset anyone.
