Peanut Butter & Crackers: An Open Letter to My Dad

Dad,

Today mom gave me a box of 'things of you' I have kept throughout the years.
Seemingly simple objects; to me, the ingredients of a memoir dedicated to your remembrance that tastes so sweet, so good, and at the same time so bitter, so bland. How comforting and ruthless these 'things of you' have become.
A multi-coloured glow stick from the circus you took us to.
An orangutan plushie you got me for Christmas.
An album-the sweetest of treasures. Memories hinging on a moment stilled within a frame. Your company Christmas party. Vacations to Nashville. A family, full & whole, poised before a lighthouse.

And I am brought back.
Back to where I have been afraid to wander.
Back to you.

You're gone.
You've been gone.
I see now that my greatest struggle in this has been my sense that you were already gone long before the strokes.

The image of you lying on the couch the day of the Christmas parade stings hot in my mind. How seven short hours later mom would wake us with her screams, leading us into the car. From the moment we entered that vehicle until we pulled up to the emergency entrance of the hospital, I only remember the red stop lights. Maybe it's because I knew life had stalled. Maybe it's because the urgency to get you help weighed heavy in our Malibu car. Or maybe I knew, even then, that you were coming to an end.

It's a strange thing, to have grown up without you, determining at 10 years old that to be fatherless is normal.
Accepted.
Reality.
It's an even stranger thing to feel that your absence had long been felt before mom woke us with her screams that morning.

I have festered in resentment & bitterness in the things of you I learned too soon. Too young, I was. Too untainted to be contaminated with what was unearthed. The strung together words made up sentences that effortlessly accused and dismissed and scrutinized you. It was all too much for my young soul to carry.

So I secluded myself from you, isolating any semblance of your memory, touch, and presence from my life. I barricaded walls of anger and confusion around the remnants of my tender youthfulness that was stolen from me the day you left us.

You died. And that day, I buried not only you, but your memory.

And I ran.

It's a funny thing, running from pain. You seem to outrun it so you slow your pace, when a photograph, memory, smell sprouts up and pricks itself into your lungs and you can't breathe all over again.

Heart gripped, breath caught.

Run faster.

And so I fled from you.
Resented you.
Sometimes, hated you.

At 10 years old I decided you never loved me, because it was easier to accept that loss than grieve the death of my daddy. I lived by this conviction for so long.

Then, five years ago I packed up my belongings- I left the box of 'things of you' behind. And I ran to university to start over.
But rather than stifling my heart in alcohol and boys as I planned to, I was embraced by Love. I encountered Healing. I met beautiful Jesus. Jesus stepped into the pain I was drowning in and gave me space to breathe. Accept. Heal. Begin to, anyways.

Around this time something beautiful started to happen.
Grace.
So much of it.
So much grace welling up in me, reaching out to you. Shouting for you. Calling out your name.
Rather than recalling perceived painful rejections, my mind began to wander to gentle moments, the serene kind, that are love & peace & joy.
And so my mourning for my daddy-for you- has now become real to me.

And it hurts so much.
And it heals so much.

There have been times I've screamed 'til my throat ached to drown out the louder fears & pain that suffocated me when you left. To this day, I am unsure if you will ever know the gaping hole of pain & confusion & brokenness you left behind.

Six strokes. That's all it took to cripple the strongest man I knew.
I recall mom telling me you couldn't walk anymore. Couldn't swallow. Couldn't speak.
Paralyzed. It's an ugly, ugly word.

I think of my two months in the hospital this year- the two most testing, gruelling, painfully raw, fiercely cutting, shattering and piercing months of my life.
And then I think of you. You were in that hospital corner for six months.

I don't remember the last time I saw you in a hospital bed, but I remember the first. Light coming through the windows and falling on the darkness of that corner. Darkness that hung there heavy even with the blinds opened.

So many painful moments that branded my memories followed.

Reading the pamphlet on diabetes beside the elevator, my focus diverted as the surgeons wheeled you out of surgery. You were unconscious, tubes strung out of your mouth and nose. Your gown stained with blood.

The morning we woke to mom's screams.
The look in her eyes as she told us.

All I remember of the funeral is Scottish mints and asking mom on the way home if your last name would still be mine.

But, oh, how victorious it has been to overcome those painful ties to you with the sweetest and gentlest recounts of the things of you.

I will cherish the sensation of your back beneath my fingertips as I rub your back, your gold necklace loosely dangling from your neck.

I will warmly recount that it was you I ran to after hard days at school; that I was always met with a "Step into my office", which may have seemed like the corner of your bed to others, but I knew was actually a place of devotion & care, compassion & tenderness.

I remember laying awake in bed each night, waiting for the door to open and your presence to fill that small apartment, because it never felt safe until you did.
I also remember realizing I would never feel safe again there, that you were never coming home.

I grieve the celebrations, victories, defeats, and joys we never got to experience together.
That you will never meet Dan.
That you weren't there to give him a hard time when he asked for my hand.
That you did not hold mine as I walked down the aisle.
That in what should have been the father-daughter dance I stood to the side, choking down years of hurt.
I mourn that the only photo of you that day was of one already framed, resting on a creamed coloured table.
And yet I will not be strangled by the pain any longer.
I will so fondly recall the gift it was to have you as a father while I had you.

But mostly, I will forever dearly & humbly recount our countless evenings sharing peanut butter and a bag of saltine crackers, the dimly lit kitchen light flowing over your shoulders. No words needed. The silence of that moment was met with unrelenting peace, joy, grace. Your smile. My adoration. Reconciliation was there. Those moments were ours.
No elapsed time, no pain, no doubt will take that from me.
Of all memories, these have remained the most vivid.
I think they always will.
Because, it was in those moments over peanut butter & crackers, though temporal and passing, that you gave me a lifetime of assurances of a father's love for his little girl.
Thank you for that.

Love and miss you always,
Bubba (as you so dearly referred to me as until the day you died).