Endless List of Lasts
Lasts, lasts, lasts.
An endless list of lasts.
The lasts are all I can think about these days when I think about my dad. Which is always; all the time right there beneath the surface, and the smile, I present to the world.
At the end of the Thanksgiving holiday, 2019, my family was rushing to the car to get me to the Megabus. I suddenly remembered—take family photos.
We snapped these rushed photos, and it’s the last family photo I have before we knew the cancer diagnosis. Before daddy’s first and last chemo treatment. Before we knew he was dying and it was going to happen soon.
After the photos, daddy drove me to the Whitemarsh bus stop for the last time, a ritual we’d been practicing since I was 18, at least 4 times a year since I’d visit home so often, any chance I got.
Looking back on all those visits and sometimes terrible, long, late, sweaty, cramped Megabus rides, I’m so glad endured them. I’m so glad they were cheap, although they probably should have been cheaper.
I had no idea how little time I had with my dad, and even though I could have been off with friends or at Florida spring break, I came home almost every time.
We had so little time left. Not enough time. It will never be enough time.
It’s been a slow realization, but I know now, after almost a year of missing my dad, that there will be no end to missing him. There will be no filling of the hole he left. There will not be a day that I won’t wonder what it would have been like had he still been here.
I’m realizing that for as many days as I have left here, I will live in the constant tension of joy and sorrow. Any day of rejoicing is, and will be, colored by the sorrow.
Right now, and probably for many more months and years, it’s mostly sorrow with some joy breaking through. As Tennyson writes in his poem “In Memoriam”, it’s a “sorrow touch’d with joy.” Maybe someday it will be the other way around.
One day, everyone will learn this—to live in the tension of sorrow and joy—and they will learn to live with it.
But God, I wish I didn’t have to learn it so young.
I would never, ever have wanted this or asked for it, not matter how much it teaches me, no matter how much it prepares me for more loss and grief, or grows my empathy with others, or helps me walk alongside others who hearts are breaking.
I have heard from many people that they’ve learned from me. I’m one of the first ones in my community of friends and family to lose an immediate family member, to lose a parent, and not everyone wants to write publicly about it, either, if they have. I am glad, truly, that I’ve been able to talk about my experience and that some have learned a little from me.
Anything I have to offer is more costly than you can imagine. To my friends who have lost a parent or sibling or spouse or dear friend—I am with you. I am so, so sorry.
I wish I wasn’t the one showing you what it can be like. I wish I was the one with my immediate family still in tact, getting ready to celebrate Christmas together. I wish my dad had made Martha Washington's eggnog before Thanksgiving. I wish he was sitting in the other room right now, humming along to Peanuts Christmas (or singing "Río río chíu" in his actually quite good falsetto) and getting ready to whip something delicious up for dinner.
And I would trade all the lessons and growth back in an instant for another hug from my daddio and a scruffy kiss on the cheek and to hear him say, “I love you more than you know, Heathybear.”