Ten Years

Ten years ago today I never thought, never expected, never once imagined, that I’d be able to look forward instead of backward in time.  Ten years ago today, this evening to be more precise, my world was torn apart.  It had begun long before that moment, but the final strand snapped that night.  In the years since, I've spent every 20^th and 28^th of May pondering how it could have all gone so wrong and wondering despite everything I know, if I could have done something, anything to change the end result, and knowing nothing I did or said would have changed anything at all. 

Ten years ago, on May 20^th, 2003, my father turned 49.  Eight days later on May 28, 2003, he died of cancer.  He’d gone through radiation and chemotherapy, yet, within a year of being diagnosed, he was dead.  Nothing on earth anyone could have done to change that, not even the doctors.  Nevertheless, still I felt there was something I could have done differently.  He was my daddy, my hero, and he was dead. 

We held a memorial service for him in town, and many people came to mourn and to reminiscence with us; his widow, his son and his daughter as well as his two brothers, nieces and nephews, in-laws, all who loved him.  We held a memorial service for him outside town, a prelude to burying him with his parents, and more people came, to reminiscence, to mourn and to cry “why?” these people were folks who were friends with his parents, watched my father grow up, live and die while they were still here. 

The first year was a blur, as was the second, still as the years went by, where I was on the 20^th and 28^th of May never changed.  I was up in the beautiful cemetery of White Salmon, remembering my dad.  I remember the first time I didn't make it up on his birthday due to the car’s engine dying and the pouring rain I panicked.  It was so hard for me to let it go, just being there physically.  Sure, others told me, I can remember my dad elsewhere, but that’s where I feel most close to him.  Not because he’s buried there, but my grandparents are too, and it’s a place that I know he loved.  It’s not his name on a gravestone that I gravitate towards, it’s the town he went to high school, it’s streets he loved driving, it’s the view he loved. 

Through the years it’s helped that he passed on May 28^th, since it’s always near Memorial Day.  My uncles (his brothers) and my cousins would often head up on the holiday to clean up the gravestones, place flowers, walk the cemetery that my dad had so many stories about and simply spend time as a family, telling stories about my grandma, grandpa and Dad. 

One of my early dates with my now husband was to the cemetery.  It was only a little over three years since my dad had died, and we’d only been dating a few months, but somehow it was that important to me for him to see who I was and at that time that I was still so raw that it was almost all of who I was.  I couldn't see anything else clearly.  My now husband took that date in stride and has stuck by me every random tear since. 

Ten years, sometimes it seems it can’t have been that long, and then I think of all that has happened.  My mother, though devastated at my father’s death, remarried.  I was married and my brother, instead of my father, walked my down the aisle with tears barely held back.  One uncle's voice was thick with tears as he sang at my wedding while the other performed the ceremony.  A few months later, I almost died, but somehow didn't.  My brother’s now married and has his own family; a beautiful baby girl, adding to the next generation of our family.  Three of my cousins have gotten married, and another is engaged.  One uncle had heart surgery, my aunt broke her hip.  Some things big, some things random, all have happened since he died. 

I remember the day I cried the hardest.  Two years ago on May 28^th we were in California at a wedding.  I cried because it was the first day in eight years that I had gone almost the entire day without realizing what day it was.  How could I ever have done that?  How?

This year, this tenth year, my family gathered ‘round.  My mother, her husband, my brother and his wife and daughter and my husband and I, and we spent a long weekend at the coast, taking long walks on the beach, eating dinners as a family and remembering.  Our last night there we told stories, most of my dad, some even of my grandparents.  We cried a little and laughed a lot and our spouses saw a glimpse more of this person none of us will ever stop loving. 

This afternoon I’m headed up to the cemetery for what will be the last planned visit I have for a long time.  A few years ago this would have sent me into a panic from which I’m not sure I’d recover.  I've always been tied to the Northwest no matter where I live, and since my father’s death, even more so.  I've been reluctant to leave this place that my dad loved so much.  Yet somehow in the years that have gone by I've gone through those stages; denial, grief, acceptance and I've been able to say goodbye. 

Now I look at my past and I’m so grateful to have had the father I did, so glad he was the man he was and that I had him for all of those 22 years, and I never doubted that I had his love.  Sure, I wish he could have been with me for the past ten years as well and more, but I've stopped wishing for something that never could be, that never will be.  When I leave this state, because I need more sunshine in my life, and because my husband is following his dream, I know I go with his blessing.  Today, ten years after my world was torn apart, I’m able to look at what will be, not what I think should have been.  And I don’t regret it.