Hellobee

Continued from here.

My dad was gone and I had never really met him. I had dreamt of him. Sought him out in almost every man I had ever met. I had been mad at him. I had hated him. I had cried because of him. I had loved him.

Mr. Oyster came home from work to be with me, but I don’t remember much of the day after that. My mom called me the next day, incredibly hesitant to tell me the news that she had heard from family who had contacted her. I told her I already knew – but didn’t really elaborate as to how.

After feeling an overwhelming well of sadness, I also wept for Scallop. He would never know his other grandpa. But how could I explain someday that I wasn’t sure he would have ever known him anyways? I frantically emailed my dad’s neighbor back explaining my shock and how sad I was that my dad didn’t know he was a grandpa. When I found out that he did know, and that he had seen pictures of Scallop through Facebook, I felt a sense of relief, along with more sadness. He knew he was a grandpa but I have no idea what he felt about it. Did he want to meet his grandson? Did he see any of himself in the pictures of Scallop he saw? I’ll probably never know. More regrets to add to my pile.

In the months after his death I became very confused as to how I was supposed to navigate life now that my biggest regret was gone and somehow made larger at the same time. I even sought out a spiritual medium to help me gain some sort of better understanding into my father’s death. For anyone who knows me, this was a HUGE stretch of my beliefs – one I don’t truly understand myself, other than that my grief was so heavy I needed something, anything to lighten it.  The things she told me did, honestly, make me feel better in the moment and I hung onto every word she said.

I guess I was kind of surprised that none of my dad’s family reached out to me following his death… but then again, they hadn’t reached out to me in the 29 previous years of my life, so I guess I wasn’t that surprised. I had heard that I was named in his obituary, but hadn’t actually read it until I was getting ready to write this post. It was hard to breathe while reading the actual words ‘survived by his daughter.’

I will forever be left with some of the few things I know about my dad. His favorite color was blue. He loved NASCAR, especially Dale Jr. (a fact which led me to follow him for a few years, even though I’m not a racing fan). He was a good, hard worker and he loved what he did. Those are all things I know from his letters, and it may be the most I’ll ever know about him. But I think the story that I’ll tell my kids is one that my mom told me when I was little…

When I was a baby my dad was a sugarmaker – he made maple syrup in Vermont. You have to boil the syrup over a very hot, open flame for quite a while, and I guess my dad used to sit by the fire for so long making the syrup that he had a permanent tan, even in the winter. It seems like such a silly, small story when I say it to other people – but in my head I can see him, sitting by that fire, doing what he loved. He’s real to me in that moment.

He has made me realize how much I hate having regrets and how important it is just to pick up the phone and reach out. I think I would have liked to do that, even if nothing came from it. I hope he knows that I loved him.