Since Before Time We Have Been

"Since before time we have been.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey .
Life is a game of hide- and -seek .
We were never born and can never die.
I see him every time I see your picture or read your sentence structure. "
          February 8th, 2012--Written to me by Gus Scholtz--
                                            My friend, family friend, friend of my father.

The following was written on February 7th, 2012

Topsy Turvy day today.  Along with the other misc day-to-day comings and goings and things to deal with, it's my dad's death day.  I find I always introspect about him and end up writing about my feelings as I process this loss every year.  I don’t really plan on it, it just kind of happens and this year is no different.

And so here I am, orphaned daughter, wondering how 12 years can go by so quickly and yet still seem like an eternity. The memory of his death always pulls on me like a sucking void when the thoughts of it come around and there is no taking it back—and I think that every time.  There’s no taking it back.  There’s no changing it. 

Death is such a personal thing.  Everything you feel, all of your thoughts and memories and that ringing sadness that clings to you as an experience that brings itself around, at times, when you least expect it, and sometimes when you do, it’s all in you and sometimes there are words, but sometimes there is nothing but the sorrow.  It’s a lonely grief because it is persistent and always somewhere in the periphery.  Other people don’t know it, don’t feel it, because it is solitarily yours.  They may have their own, but yours is your burden to carry, your loss to feel, your sadness to pack. 

When people die they take a piece of you with them, and you’re always kind of looking at how to get that piece back, how to fill that space. But it’s changed and morphed and gone, there is no getting it back.  And so you are left with the shadows of smiles remembered, and wisps of memories that start to fade in your mind, and the hollow call that is never answered. The sad piece is that you try so hard to hold on to clarity, crispness and color.  You try to remember the feel of loving arms and the sound of a voice that was home to you, but your brain betrays you and it all begins to fade. 

If you are lucky, perhaps there is a recording of some sort of their voice and you have some happy photos to help jostle the memories loose from their tightly honeycombed cavern within your brain.  It’s a blessing to have those things, but even when you do, it’s not enough because it’s not them.  And it is them that you are actually craving and are what you are looking for.  These other things are only a pale consolation prize.

A few months ago my mom came across an old cassette tape of my dad’s.  Ecstatically I put it into the player thinking “His voice!  I’ve missed his voice!”  For the briefest of seconds he was there.  He was speaking in Portuguese and I only had a moment to register that he sounded a lot like my brother Andy.  Then he stopped speaking and there was nothing.  I thought “There must be more!” and looked down and saw the tape turning.  With a sudden realization I panicked as I realized the machine was eating the tape.  I stopped the tape and was able to pull the mess out without ripping the tape, but it was done for now as we didn’t want to risk another eating episode.

And so, just as fleetingly as I heard him, again, he was gone.  It wasn’t long enough to register and stick, only long enough to make a heart sigh and for ears to strain to remember every sound--but to fail.

Science fiction and fantasy are fun to think about but they are never real no matter how much we may play with it or wish it. Sometimes I dream about time machines and reincarnations and returns from distant journeys or secret missions.  Sometimes I dream of alternate endings or of changes in history or of events and choices.

Sometimes I indulge in scenario-vision and think about what should have been and is not.  Sometimes I think about the things that would be different if he were still around.  Sometimes I think about the injustices that he would never have permitted, of the defending that he would have provided, and the wall that he would have been between me and the buffetings of the world.  I dream about the conversations we would have had and the ideas and music and books we would have shared.  I think about how he would have reacted to any number of situations and peoples and scenarios. 

The reality is that no amount of speculation changes the end result.  No amount of wishing and fretting and dreaming can turn back time and change the end.  He is gone and is gone and is gone and he isn’t ever coming back…not to this life at least.

He has missed a lot and is missed a lot.

I'm a little blue with a tight throat and there are always tears that come...always.

And so time marches on...and so do we.