Ghost story

I watch the western sky,

The sun is sinking

The geese are flying south

It sets me thinking

I did not miss you much

I did not suffer

What did not kill me

Just made me tougher.

When my beloved father died, my son was 35 weeks inside my womb.

There is a joy and fierce protectiveness that comes with pregnancy.  You will do what you have to do to protect that precious creature inside you at all costs. You avoid anything that could cause trauma.   You eat right.  You take your vitamins and avoid putting anything in your mouth that could harm.

And you carefully measure your emotions, only allowing that which you know your mind can handle without surrendering fully to them.

I did not cry when my father died.  My brother was with him as he took his last breath, and I made it to the hospital right afterward…… the air from his last bit of life still hanging in the air, so near his face.   I could feel his presence in the room as if he wasn’t sure he could leave us at such a fragile time in our lives.

I remember standing next to him, holding his hand and thinking “He would want me to remove these tubes from his body.  I have to do this for him” and so I set about the task with his nurse….the task of preparing to say goodbye forever.  The task of preparing my mind to wrap around a world in which my father was not physically present.

And I shut down.  Turned it off.  All of it.  I washed him with her.  I pulled tubes and turned off machines.

But I did not cry.  Not even when my mother arrived and collapsed on the floor when we told her he was gone.

I filed it all into the “safe” folder.  Do not go there, I told myself.

It was not until much later, after we had left the hospital, that I allowed a slip in the armour.  After Billy had arrived too late, in a frantic drive from Galveston to be there to say goodbye to a much loved father-in-law…only to find an empty hospital room.  After he ushered me into a dark hotel room.  After we climbed in bed and he wrapped his arms around me.  It was then that I cried safely and privately , if only for a moment.

Stay away.  The baby.  At all costs, do not allow the dam to break.

I feel the winter come

His icy sinews

Now in the firelight

The case continues

Another night in court

The same old trial

The same old questions asked

The same denial.

All of the trauma of that last week I filed away for a day when I did not have a tiny human being to protect inside.  I knew my body would not handle the cascade of emotions that would happen if I pulled one, small memory from the pile.

I gave birth to his 1st grandchild 5 weeks later.  We named our new son after his grandfather.  Cory John.   And I cried.  Not for my father, but for my joy at having a blond, blue eyed son to pass down the legacy of a danish grandfather to.

The flood of emotions never came.  In the ensuing weeks, I talked about the week he died in the same way I talked of my sons birth…..that need to tell the story.  The need to put it out there as if that would make it less surreal.

The nightmares started about a month later.  I would dream the same one over and over again, always the same scene……me, lying in his hospital bed with him.  My head on his chest, listening to his heart beat when his breathing stopped.  Slow…slower…slower still.  And at the moment it stops, he sits up frantically, grabs me and gasps “Help me.”  A horrible dream.

The shadows closely run

Like jury members

I look for answers in

The fire’s embers

Why was I missing then

That whole December

I give my usual line

I don’t remember.

Another winter comes

His icy fingers creep

Into these bones of mine

These memories never sleep.

And all these differences

A cloak I borrow

We kept our distances

Why should it follow I must have loved you.

A dream?  No.  It was my reality.  It happened late one evening 4 days before he died.  The father that used to pull splinters from my hand.  The one who stroked my fevered forehead, brushing my sweaty hair off my face when I was sick.  The sweet father who held me tight when I had nightmares.  The one that played little mouse with me.   The one that walked me down the aisle.  This father.  The table turned abruptly and it was he who needed me. In a panic for air he grabbed me one night and said “help me”.   Only, there was nothing I could do for him.  I could not help him.  I could not make his lungs breathe and bring oxygen to his heart and brain.  I could! not! stop! it!    I was just your little girl, how could I help you?

What is the force that binds the stars

I wore this mask to hide my scars

What is the power that pulls the tide

I never could find a place to hide.

What moves the earth around the sun

What could I do but run and run and run

Afraid to love, afraid to fail.

A mast without a sail.

This fall, it has been 15 years since my father died.  He never once gave us any reasons to regret or feel guilty about our relationship with him.  See, life was never about him.  It was always about those around him.  Selfless to the end, he was.  I tell myself that this is why my grief is so stifled.  Why grieve for someone who did not want you to grieve for them?  I would like to underline that grief and remembrance are two distinctly different animals.   Missing someone does not mean that you have to mourn them.

Missing my dad comes in waves.  It hits me like a hard blow to the gut.  The birth of each of my children.  The need to call him and say “Hey dad, guess what?” and hearing him laugh and say “I don’t play guessing games, girl. Tell me what”.

Mandolin solos.  Those make me gasp for breath like jumping into icy cold water does.  Once when running, a song came on my headphones and the mandolin solo had me bending over with my hands on my knees, sobbing.  He could pull that instrument down from the fireplace, the same wood worn mandolin hand-hewn by my great-uncle before he died in the great war, and with the flicker of his quick hands the notes would soar through the house and wrap around us in a haunting melody.   In one of those “ah yes” moments, I realize that this is where Cory gets the gift of creating music. His father and I are unable to play a note.

When I go home, I can still open his closet, step in and inhale the smell of him.  It is like a magical wardrobe that transforms me into his 6yo little girl.  I will FOREVER be grateful to my mother for not clearing out that closet in a fit of sorrow.

He once said to me “When I am dead and gone…..when there is nothing left…..eventually you will all forget me.  Life will go on as it should.”

I….will…..never……forget….YOU.

You were my compass star

You were my measure

You were a pirates map

Of buried treasure.

My nightmares stopped eventually….replaced by his ghost.  It wisps around my house in earthly forms.  The fingers of my hands that make my brother stop short and take them in his own to gaze in wonder at.  “Your hands” he says “they are Dad’s”.  And he laughs, because how strange to see Dad’s hands after all these years without him.

The knees poking out of my 12 yo Codys  shorts.  Knees that could only belong to my Dad, but are sent down to carry on into a new generation.

Codys eyes.  Mine as well.  Sparkling.  Turned down at the corners.  Cody….he is Dad’s mirror image.

The way I laugh.

How I surprise myself when I find my fingers taping out a rhythm on my knee as I am impatient… the way his used to.  The same, exact rhythm drummed out from my subconscious.

How strange to see him in Cody.  Cody, who never met Dad, but has all his mannerisms.  The way he walked.  The way he used to plan things out with such deliberation.  Taking the trash out was something that had to be planned in the same way that he drew out plans for the electrical system on an airplane.  Cody does this.  With my Dad’s same hand gestures.  When he has something to appeal to us about, we sit back and make ourselves comfortable, because we know it is going to take a while.

How could I forget you when I have you with me day after day.  When I play little mouse with my daughter I smile and know you are living on with us.

I never really cried hard for you.  I had to take care of the living.  I could not make that last week less painful.  I can’t erase it.  I can’t go back and do anything different.  It is what it is.  It doesn’t mean I miss you any less.  I had to teach myself this. I had to realize that I am my fathers daughter, and you would have expected nothing less.  You told me yourself during that last week “Go home.” because you were worried about the baby…all the while struggling to breathe. It doesn’t mean I loved you any less because I shut it out for so long.  I couldn’t help you.  I know this now.  There was nothing as a daughter or a nurse that I could have done differently to make it better.  I was there.  I loved you will my whole heart, and I know now that that was all you needed.

If this was all correct

The last thing I’d expect

The prosecution rests

It’s time that I confess:  I must have loved you. ~ Ghost Story by Sting