My Ga-Ga

When I was five, my aunt had a large stuffed seal she named Holly. (I wish I could use a better verb than “have”--- like “was given” or “purchased” or “procured”--- but I was five, and so she just had it). I saw Holly and instantly wanted her in the only the way a  Kindergartner could: endlessly, hopelessly. My aunt told me I could borrow her for a week, and I treasured every moment I spent with her, her large faux fur body awkwardly pressed against my small one all night long. I cried when I had to return her.

The next time I saw my grandfather--- who will from now on be referred to as “Ga-ga”--- he told me to come sit next to him.

“I hear a noise. Why don’t you lift up that pillow?”

Underneath was a small, pure white seal. Simple. I shrieked with joy, hugged my Ga-ga, and named her Merry. (Like Merry Christmas, NOT Jesus’s mom. I was precocious.)

Merry came everywhere with me for the next four years. I wrote my first short story about her when I entered first grade. The next year, Merry travelled to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, hundreds of miles away from the rest of my family, when my mom decided to uproot the three of us. I clung to her through grocery stores and five more new apartments. She was my companion when I moved back to my hometown and in with some strange man I had never seen before.

But this isn’t about Merry. And it isn’t about me. It’s about my Ga-ga.

Ga-ga’s love for me was like his gifting of Merry the Seal: extravagant, subversive, spoiled. A constant in a tumultuous childhood, a volatile adolescence, and an against-the-odds stable young adulthood. Self-less, unconditional, but at times demanding: I did, after all, take on a $60,000 mortgage after my dad died just to make him happy. (Our only fight was about that house. It lasted a day.)

Ga-ga loved his wife, his children, his grand-daughters, vanilla ice cream, DiGiorno pizza, worrying, pacing, Epcot, and cleaning his pool. He was, at times, racist and sexist. He thought I was a Rhodes Scholar because I transferred colleges after my freshman year. I never saw him read a book, but he read to me when I was a child, and he told me I could go anywhere in the world if I knew how to read. He made me realize books were my escape, and I devoured them with a ferocious hunger.

He was an imperfect man that saw the good in all people.  

Ga-ga gave me his love of Disney. He purchased a larger-than-life Astro Gladiator van with bucket seats and a VCR--- a true luxury in 1994!!!--- so I would be comfortable on our road trips to see the Mouse. (He owned that car until he died, saying he could never sell it because my tape-recorded Sailor Moon episodes were still in the backseat.) We shared my first flight on Peter Pan; breakfasts in Cinderella Castle; and adventures sliding down the tongue of a dragon. Later, we shared singing songs from Moulin Rouge under an umbrella as the rain poured down for hours; visiting my future wedding ceremony sites; and, just last year, Easter brunch. When I visited Disneyland for the first time in April, I called him as soon as we checked in so I could give him a tour of the hotel room. At times, I felt guilty for going to California instead of going to see him, but he talked about my trip excitedly for months. I wish I could have taken him with me.

 Pancreatic cancer ended his life swiftly and without care. But his life was not defined by those five painful months. While he may be a pancreatic cancer statistic, another checkpoint in its devastating numbers, he was also so much more. He was my Ga-ga.

Birthday #1

I haven't written anything in forever for a number of reasons: mainly because I am a first year teacher, but also because I had a blog identity crisis. While I started this blog because I wanted a venue to express my feelings about my dad's death, I found myself wanting to write about other things, and I wasn't sure if that's okay.

But, you know what? This is mine, so of course it's okay. That is, however, why the blog has a new title.

*  *   *

Today is my dad's birthday. He should be 48, but he isn't.

My dad hated celebrating his birthday, probably because it fell two days after Christmas. He was always victim to "after thought" presents or, perhaps worse, the dreaded joint gift: a present that counted for both days. His birthday was also difficult for me logistically, as my parents divorced when I was a little girl and neither parent would help me get a gift for the other one. One year, I gave my dad a motorcycle keychain as his present because it was the only slightly masculine thing I found in any of the stores I went to with my mom that day (and she wouldn't allow me to go off by myself). Every single year, he complained about that motorcycle keychain... but he also kept it. It was probably still in the straw basket next to his stove when my grandfather cleaned out his house.

My dad didn't like sweets ("I crave salt," he would say), and usually refused to eat his own grocery store birthday cake. He would begrudgingly go over to the grandparents' house for a few hours, bicker with his sister, and then we would head home and watch his blurry television on his comfortable, albeit dog-haired covered, couch. We wouldn't watch anything in particular, usually just a little bit of everything that was on. He would spend the most time on the Public Access channels, reading the details of events he would attend and making up stories about the "bitches" who chaired the PTO. We would leave it on the NFA channel for hours and try to guess what song was coming up next. He would fall asleep by 7:00 (his snoring was legendary) and Chris and I would yell
"Wake up!!!"
"I wasn't sleeping," he would protest, and would mumble something before falling asleep again. If we were particularly mean, we would throw water on him to wake him up a second, third, or fourth time.
"I'll bet you I can fall asleep in the next 20 seconds. Wait... wait... watch."

And, of course, he would. And then the cycle would repeat.

My dad's birthday didn't mean a lot to him, but it means a lot to me now. I wish I could tease him about being 2 years closer to 50. (Oh, the gag gifts I would have bought him for 50!) I wish I could have bought him yet another t-shirt he'll probably never wear, or maybe even a replacement remote controlled helicopter that broke a few years ago. I wish I could watch him not eat cake, but devour an entire raw steak when he got home. I wish, more than anything, I was not sitting on my brand new, terribly expensive, almost dog-hair free couch and was instead on his cozy, well-loved sectional; the sectional my high school friends wanted to come over and nap on when they had bad days.

Instead, I will just spend the day missing him, and looking for the number 11 wherever I go. Happy Birthday, Daddy.

Not a Father's Day

I leave for Teacher for America Induction tomorrow afternoon. Even though I only live 2.5 miles away from Marquette's campus, I have to live in a Marquette dorm from Tuesday-Saturday. I think it's a bit silly, but I've been biting my tongue and dealing with it. I understand that TFA wants us to be a part of the Corps Member community, and I understand that completely.

I will, however, miss Chris and Smokey so much. I figured out last night when I couldn't sleep that, since we've been engaged (so roughly two years), we have only been apart for 10 nights. 10 nights! And now here's another 5 to add to that number.

But, even more than that, I am most worried about TFA Institute. Institute is an intense 5 week program in Chicago, which means I will be away from Chris and Smokey for 5 weeks. Oddly, I am not worried about how busy I will be or how much work I will have to do (I will be teaching summer school to inner-city children--- I know it won't be easy!), but I am worried about how much I will miss my two boys back home. They're kind of my whole world, and I just don't feel like myself when I am away from them. From what I have read, I should be able to go home on weekends, even though they don't recommend it--- but it's certainly not disallowed. I aim to go home every weekend, even if I have to spend my entire weekend doing prep work.

However, I'm also worried because... well... Institute starts on Sunday. Go check your calendar and figure out what holiday is on Sunday. Yup, that's right, I begin this incredibly stressful journey on Father's Day. On my first Father's Day without a father. And, honestly, all I want to do is call my dad and talk about how nervous I am (how much blood I am shitting, as we would say) and I to receive a text from him that says simply "kick ass 2day."

I'll try to kick ass, Daddy. But it would be so much easier if you were here to tell me to.

Remember that time I left class because I started crying?

In my American Lit class today, we were talking about Emily Dickinson's death poetry. I had skimmed some of the poems (I have been a terrible graduate student this semester), and had momentarily thought that it could have been a difficult class for me, but I decided to go anyway. After all, talking about death in an academic sense is completely different from experiencing the death of a loved one, isn't it?

Apparently, I was not able to make the distinctions as easily as I thought. I was fine, at first, but my classmates started bringing up their own experiences with funerals and grieving. All I could think about was my dad's funeral: the dark gray metal of his coffin; the drawn out service that would have bored him to tears; my grandmother managing to squeeze out the words "It was a beautiful service" through her tears.

And, honestly, I was annoyed too. My classmates kept posing questions like "What is the point of funerals? Who are they for?" We talked about cremation too--- which also irked me, as a girl who would have been my younger sister-in-law was cremated two years ago.

So, I tried to say something. I really did. I was going to talk about closure. I was going to bring up people who plan their own funerals. I was going to be smart, and I was going to try and put to words everything I had been feeling for the last hour or so...

...but I just couldn't do it. My voice cracked, I had to stop talked, and I decided to leave class ten minutes early. And, you know, it hurt my pride more than anything. Before now, I had been very good at compartmentalizing my grief and putting on my "Student Hat" and my "Teacher Hat." I felt like all of that went away during class today, and I was inexplicably embarrassed. Embarrassed because they'll always remember the time someone started crying in class.

And, I suppose to some extent, I'm ashamed of myself too. I know I shouldn't be, but I thought I was stronger than that. I guess, sometimes, grief is just bigger than I am.

Not Always a Wish Your Heart Makes

So I haven't posted in a few weeks, and I feel badly about that. I wanted this blog to be an ongoing thing, but right now... well, talking about my dad has started to hurt. A few days after my dad died, I talked about him frequently. I wondered what he was doing up there in heaven, and how much he was judging and complaining about peoples' reactions. But now that it's been two and a half months, doing so hurts. It hurts because it's been two and a half months since I have spoken to him, and the longer it is, the more it hurts. I know I've said this before, but I truly thought time would heal. So far, it's only made the wound deeper.

Last week, I had two horrible dreams about my dad. I'm not one of those people that thinks every image in a dream has some sort of deeper, hidden meaning, but these dreams were fairly straightforward.

In the first one, I received a series of text messages from my dad. (Actually, they were instant messages from his "MustangAndy11" AIM account that went straight to my phone. He contacted me like this almost every single day.) I was surprised, and told him I thought he was dead. He told me, in his traditional terrible grammar and spelling, that it was just a mistake. He had been in the hospital, but he was out now, and he was fine. He then started complaining about my grandparents, which was another one of his favorite hobbies.

In the second one, I was at home, and I was wearing the veil from my wedding day. My dad came through the door, and, again, I told him that I thought he was dead. He didn't have an explanation; he just told me that he wasn't, and we resumed our normal routines. I was so happy to see him, yet I didn't show it.

After both dreams (especially the first), I woke up with a second of hopefulness, only to remember that they were just dreams. I've found no comfort in these dreams, only momentary pain. I just hope they stop.

Absence

My dad's absence is with me wherever I go.

I feel it when I wake up, especially when I receive a text message before my eyes have opened. I wonder, briefly, if it's him sending me a picture of something weird: the sign of a diner I hated, Exit 23, or a blurry picture of a baby fox he thought was cute.

I feel it now, when I'm home alone all day because it's spring break. I would usually call him and tell him I was "booooooored." "Uh-oh," he would say, and then would launch into some tedious, drawn out story about what he did today. I was supposed to take my Master's Examination this week, but I had to put it on hold because I wasn't emotionally ready for it. If I had been taking it, he would have messaged me every morning when he woke up with a "good luck today" and would have called me during the break, eagerly awaiting to hear how I did.

I felt it earlier, when I was driving my Volkswagen Beetle to Michael's. I had the sunroof open and was blasting a Taylor Swift CD. I thought of the sunny day my dad bought me my car. He hadn't wanted to buy a Beetle, but he did. "It's been my dream car since I was 11," I said. "I know. Mandy Moore was driving one in that stupid music video, except she wasn't 16 so she wasn't actually driving. They had to pull her."

I felt it when I spent $15 on scrapbooking supplies. He would have told me that I spend money frivolously, and that I need to save more. When I went over to TJ Maxx to get some k cups, he would have admonished me for drinking "rooty-poo" coffee and bragged about how he only drank store brand instant. Yet, whenever he visited me, he would quietly grumble that my coffee was better.

I hit the curb in a horrible attempt at parallel parking. He would have keeled over in laughter.

I felt it when I came home and had Culver's for lunch. I thought about how we never had a chance to introduce him to Culver's chicken strips. I had often told him they were the best I ever had. Had he tried them, he would have complained. Food never lived up to his high expectations.

Perhaps I felt it most yesterday, when I was that tricky combination of sad and angry. I would have called him, and he would have talked me down the ledge. I had my friends and Chris to guide me down, but it wasn't as steady as when my dad was holding the ladder.

I suppose I am eagerly looking forward to the day I don't feel it every minute of every hour of every day. But, at the same time, I often wonder if it will be lonely when I stop hearing his thoughts, and am left with just my own.

Because every day can't be a sad one.