Gert starts Kindergarten next week. Gah! I'm not ready for this. Not at all. She's my little buddy. My shadow. From this point on it's all downhill. Next thing I know my little buddy will be my teenage girl who hates me.
This whole kindergarten thing is also dredging up some deeper feelings in me. I was roughly about Gert's age when my dad died. Younger, actually. I keep looking at her and thinking about myself and wondering how in the hell I was able to process that kind of situation.
I was alone with my dad when he had his heart attack. The last time I saw him alive was in the ER, hooked up to machines I didn't understand, when he demanded that the staff let him see his little boy. I don't know if that's an imagined memory or not, but when I think of that night I recall him calling me his "little boy." I don't know why.
I was talking to Chris about it on Saturday before The Polyphonic Spree concert (which purged my dark feelings by filling a room full of unabashed hippie joy). I was telling her how my dad and I were planning to build a club house. I had even painted the plans for the club house for an art project in my kindergarten class.
There's a point in your life where your father is a hero; Superman. He can do anything, he can be anything, he can solve anything. Eventually you grow up and realize your dad has failings, makes mistakes, has a temper. Suddenly he's human and, I guess, in a way, you lose that hero.
Because I have never been able to see my father from any other view than as a five year old, so I've never lost that hero worship. In a way, it's a worship of something I'll never know; something I've never had. My father was alive for only 14% of my life. And, for most of that 14% I was too young to appreciate or even remember him. All I have are some photos, a random family movie (which I can't even find any more . . . the only actual proof I have of me and him moving and interacting together) and memories. Worse, I can't even be sure if I have actual memories or if the memories have been implanted from nearly 29 years of conversation.
So, I keep looking at Gert and wandering through this dark place inside of me. I don't want her to have to grow up without a dad, so I'll do my best to not die. I think that's fair. Oddly, whenever that thought occurs to me I think about how miserable I would be wherever I'd end up because I wouldn't have her anymore, or Matilda or Chris. Say what you will about afterlife, give me your rosiest picture based on your religion. Tell me what Jesus, Buddha, Jehovah and Krishna have to say. But, I'm telling you that without my little family, it wouldn't be worth anything.
Woah, sorry. I wasn't intending to write anything past "Gah" in this post. And yet I just drug you through the darkest sections of Gary's soul. I hope you've enjoyed your tour. Please gather your belongings, watch your step as you exit the ride vehicle, take small children by the hand.
In closing, and what I think was my whole point in this depression-fest, is I'm obsessed with this Billy Bragg song. I should warn my own family members that it's the first song in 29 years that actually states what I've been feeling for that amount of time. I wouldn't say it's a song that makes me cry, but it is one that I can get lost inside for an hour. Kind of like picking at a scab.
Billy Bragg - Tank Park Salute
great post. i lost my dad when i was 25, so i have a different impression of him. i'd long since given up on the fact that he could be a "hero," and was instead very angry with him for his many parental faults. we were just getting closer in the year before he died, though. it took having my first daughter three years ago to begin to let go of that anger. now that i see what kinds of challenges parents face every day, i see him as a more sympathetic character. my dad's mistake was to let the world beat him down. ultimately he only wanted a better life for us; he just had a shitty way of expressing it. i can only hope i'm not making the same mistakes with my daughters.
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