what once was
The spring is a time of new beginnings, of blooming, of becoming. For me, May is when everything ceases to be.
On May 10, 2007, my dad left this earth. He was forty-four. I was nine.
Raised in the highlands of Poland, my father’s was a story of heart through pain. It is a story that I carry on for him today. A loving, free-spirited, creative soul; he was raised as a child of the earth; hunting, fishing, homesteading with his five siblings. When I was young, he would tell me bedtime stories of these times. Times in the wild woods, running from bears, witnessing ghosts in cemeteries, foraging a bounty for that night’s dinner, falling into the creek, hunting with his father and brothers. I don’t know if any of his stories were true, but I believe that they are.
Still a boy, his family came to America for a better life, as many immigrants do. Much of this family’s past is shrouded in mystery for me. I wish I could ask him the many questions I still have about his life, his childhood, and his mother, my grandmother.
He witnessed the violent death of both of his parents when he was only 13 years old.
His uncle took him in, and he spent the rest of his adolescence living above a bar in a small Illinois city. He met my mother at a party somewhere, as a teenager. She had a major crush on him, but they didn’t reconnect until years later. He went into the union, as a painter, and spent his evenings drinking with his friends, living a modest yet typical life for a young man. Eventually, he and my mother fell in love, and my sister and I came to be.
His sickness has been inherited through my bloodline for generations. Alcoholism was his expression of it, but generational trauma and grief is the disease. Untreated, it broke my family apart, consumed my father, and ultimately took his life.
16 years ago today, my father left us to join the other side, perhaps to see the kingdom of heaven he put his faith in. He would be 61 today if he were still here with me. I miss him every day, and especially in May.
what could have been
I think of my family often, the one that could have been if my dad wasn’t sick, if my bloodline wasn’t plagued with trauma and anguish. The home I lived in before we left him, the one we could have celebrated every birthday and Christmas in, the one with the bedroom that could have been plastered with posters from seventeen magazine when I became a teenager, the one I could have missed when I moved away for college, the one that now belongs to another family. Another girl, another life.
I think of a girl I might have been, the one who hasn’t been to therapy on and off since she was ten. The one whose parents had money to buy a flute so she could be in band, play sports, travel to Paris with her French class. The one who would have chosen lovers who treated her well and didn’t abandon her, because her father didn’t. The one who would have known her worth from a young age because she was reminded of it often. The one who’d never been to a meeting in a church basement. The one with a dad to walk her down the aisle.
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on the snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there; I did not die.
— Clare Harner, 1934
what will never be
We will never live in a world without loss, pain, and trauma. Each one of us has a different cross to bear in life, and a weight to carry on our hearts. My weight is grief, and it never grows lighter; I only grow stronger, and it becomes easier to hold, easier to talk about.
The weight of grief is unbearable at times. Sometimes I can feel the pain of my father, and his father before him. But I also feel his spirit, and I know I have it too. His light heart, his sense of humor, his love of singing, and even his dimpled smile.
I miss him every day; when I paint, when I think of my future, when I feel happy, and when I feel sad. But I smile for him, too, and I heal for him. When I do the work to heal my pain, I know I am healing my ancestors before me. I am living the life my father could not, so that his soul might feel at peace.
The weight of grief is one I shoulder now so that my children can be born without its burden. So they might know a lighter life, so their free spirit can flourish and grow into whoever they are meant to be. And I will be around, healthy and happily, to watch them shine.
-w.w.
more like this
Leave a Reply