Yesterday would have been 66 years since your birth. It was an emotional day, at times. This is the first year I didn't have an overwhelming sense of sadness, anger and hurt. Grandma still misses you but I think she misses her idea of who you were and not the "real" you. She clings to a memory of you dancing with her. We talked and it was the first year she could talk without sounding as if she were holding back tears.
I've started writing my story in my journal. From my first memory until now, it feels almost as if I am laying out a confession and releasing lots of hard, painful feelings of shame and guilt, embarrassment and pain. I'm finding I have a lot of good memories with and of you. I'm surprised. I'm not choosing to ignore the bad, I'm just seeing that the bad is often far easier to remember. I lived without you as a part of my life for several interspersed years, the last 16 we had together were very strained.
I managed to say everything I needed to say to you over those last two months of your life. Now, I just miss you. Maybe I miss the idea of my ideal father. The potential. It's hard to live without your parents when all you want, all you crave, is a good relationship. Maybe it's easier with you being dead. At least then it's not a choice to be absent from our lives on your part. It just is.
I love you. I miss you. I wish that we had been able to have these years together, the kids enjoying a grandfather. Listening to music late into the night, trying to catch evil sparrows at 2am that fly in the the house during a thunder storm. Watching you pace the halls with my crying baby for two hours because it's the only break I've had to shower and sleep in days. There is good in the bad. Beauty in the pain. Perfection in imperfection. I'm a better parent and a better person in spite of the crazy life you and Mom gave us.
Wherever you are, I hope you were sitting on the dock of a bay, wasting time, yesterday.
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