and time passes and time passes

i listened to ray lamontagne on the way home today and have been humming the orchestral parts of 'sarah' all night.

i wasn't going to write. wasn't going to sign in to blogger. but i couldn't sleep. and one thought led to another. to another. to another.

until i found myself sitting up, grabbing my laptop off of the floor, writing.

and it was this that compelled me:

in early october, 1991, i was in 6th grade. i was 11. these are facts. the rest is possibly speculation to a point. one day, much like the rest and up to that point so indistinguishable that i couldn't tell you which specific day it was, i came home to a house full of people. these people were my mom's friends and parents. these people looked at my sister and me with the oddest pity. like pity you don't know you'll be needing or deserving of. a front before the storm. harried wind. frantic trees.

we went into our room, my sister and i, and my mom told me our dad had died.

whenever i see this moment, it is from the corner of the ceiling looking down on myself. crying. crying so hard i thought it might break my entire body. crying all night. i know for a while my grandpa sat with me, held me. but my tears knew no bounds and soaked my hands and face and clothes and sheets. my grandpa's shirt.

there have been times in my life i have felt so close to god i can almost hear his breathing. in that moment, the ensuing evening, the years that passed, i don't think i felt close to god at all. i think i felt god had forgotten about me. had left me. but when i go back, watching myself crying, i think god was there. in the corner of the ceiling.

is it possible to feel something has happened long after it has?

earlier this month marked eighteen years since my dad took his life.

eighteen years.

i remember when it had been eleven and i couldn't believe that he had been gone for as long as i had known him. now, my years without him have eclipsed those first eleven. most of which i don't remember (who remembers being two?). i used to go to our special place every october and father's day. i would sit on the brick surrounding the fountain and open up all of my thoughts in the hopes my dad could hear them. this year i forgot until tonight.

eighteen years.

i have pictures. some tape recordings of his voice. but couldn't tell you what it felt like to hug him. what his laugh sounded like. even his voice on the tape sounds weird. his michigan accent is so strong and i don't remember that at all.

it is so painful to lose little bits of him regardless of how hard i fight it. his existence gets farther and farther away from me. how could we not be strangers, one to the other?

dad, maybe you thought you weren't worth missing. or that time would allow your little girl to forget you. maybe you were a bit glad this year when i didn't show on father's day. i don't think my heart was in it. but you are a part of me. i don't need to sit at the fountain to tell you that. and there is no death that could end my love for you.

*i am yours, however distant you may be, there blows no wind but wafts your scent to me, there sings no bird but calls your name to me, each memory that has left its trace with me lingers forever as a part of me, i am yours* -eric clapton