Dad

There  were times when we didn't speak longer so thirty days should not be so unnerving or scary. It always seemed that I could call you... you would not pick up or on a lucky day you would... Maybe I would wait till a voice message to hear your voice and then disconnect, maybe we would talk. The 'always' changed into 'never' - a void, a gaping void. 'Never' that is 'never'. We say 'never' without even realizing its full meaning  - this is a real 'never' - when the other body is cold and when the heart stops. 

Last night I was thinking about your last seconds. Was it dark? Were you scared? Did you regret anything? Or did you just go... I hope so. What is it like to die? I only can tell what is it like when something dies inside a living person. It's happened to me twice already. My eyes are burning from tears. I even don't know who is crying: Ania or Ania? A small one or an adult one, or maybe both? And who will consol them? The 'never' is 'never', and I have to live. But how to live when something has died. 

It's a month tomorrow. I think about you a lot.

I think about you each time I look at Helena who will never meet you. Yes, it was my choice not to bring her to you before it was too late. I wanted to protect her and myself but now I'm not sure. I'm sure of one that it makes me sad, very sad that she will never know my father the way I knew him form when I was little.

I miss you both so, so, so much.

I will sit with this sadness and embrace it and try to make peace with it or it will eat me alive. I need to live.

I'm off to sleep. 

I was tempted to call to see if I can hear your voicemail yet this one more time. The last time. But I'm too scared to do that. Tears might burn my face completely.

Rest in Peace. You are free. 

 

 

Goodbye

Goodbye Dad,

Thank you for giving me life and teaching me a valuable lesson on how dangerous it is to play around with addictions.

I'm sure that you are in a better place and that your suffering her, and you did suffer a lot, cam to an end. 

I wish I could have helped you but you didn't want to be helped on other than your terms and your terms we could not accept. 

It's so sad to think that I will never see you again. My thoughts travel home which now is empty but I still feel your presence. I still feel like you are there. 

But you are not and only a building has left.  Our home. A guardian of the story and many secrets. 

I am still here, though.

I am still alive and I promise myself today that I will learn as much as I can from you death, that  I will do my homework and live. I want to live. I want to live and be happy no matter what.

I want to fly.

You know that I loved you. I loved you so, so much. And I only wanted one thing from you - that you stopped drinking and that you chose us. 

But you chose otherwise and I still loved you. I understand you didn't know how to live.... only you know the truth. Only you know the pain you carried, the disappointments you experienced and hopes that died in you. Only you know... You chose not to tell me or my brothers. You chose to drown in alcohol.

I choose to live. 

I chose to live a long time and ago and that's why I had to run away from you. I suffer consequences of my choices every day of be being so far away from my family. I suffer but I also know deeply inside my heart that it was my only option to run away in order to survive and live.

Live, live, live!

I wish it was different but since it's not I will play with the cards that life is dealing me. They are not the easiest cards but the game goes on and I will not give up and play the best I can though the rules of the game change without my consent. I will play nevertheless because if I stop I will die.

I want to live.

I had to pause now and have a look at my own life. The time of some changes has come, changes that will improve the quality of my existence and my work. It hasn't been the best six months of my life but the time has come to stop making a victim of myself and start working on solutions.Thank you, Dad, for making me pause. Too bad you couldn't help me figure out things otherwise.

I have no parents any more.

Goodbye Dad.

I'm sure you are in a better place.

 

A Difficult Month

I'm reading "Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society" with my students. The main character, Ye Xian, looses her mother when she is a girl and her father soon finds himself a woman who becomes a dreaded stepmother - hence the Cinderella connection. Good readers we use strategies to understand the text better: we make connections with the world outside, with our own experiences and other books. In today's chapter, Ye Xian emotionally falls apart in front of her future society brothers and tells them about her misery and pain related to her mother's death. 

I was not a little girl when I lost my mother and I didn't have a stepmother but I understand the excruciating pain a child feels loosing a parent. I told my students that I understand Ye Xian's tears because five years ago I lost my own mother. 

Although a lot of time has passed, I remember everything about her.  I remember her smell. I remember her voice, I can hear it in my head. I remember how she walked. I remember the shape of her fingernails and the texture of her hair. I remember her body shape. I remember her laughs and her tears. 

Oh, how I miss her!

October is a difficult month: each year around this tie I feel her absence even more. When it's really hard I ask her if she is somewhere around and sees me and I hear the voice that tells me that she has never left anywhere. 

I miss her. 

I have flashbacks and see scenes from our life: I see her dancing: there was a time when my house was full of laughter and joy. My parents loved having people around and every weekend there was somebody around: families, friends. I see her laughing and dancing with my father. Then I see her sitting in a chair with her cigarette drinking coffee in the morning on a terrace. Many times I would join her. 

How things can go wrong!

Guilt! I have a lot of guilt inside as well. I will not write more about it here but it's there and often I need to face these difficult emotions so that they it doesn't eat me up. I have hole in my heart.

I'm trying to leave my life as well as I can. I have my up and down, and I'm surely far from being very pleased with myself. But I'm trying. I'd like to look back one day and feel that it is possible to have a 'normal life' even after such a horrible tragedy as a suicide in the family but I'm failing so often...

And then I miss her even more... She would always tell me: if not you, then who? She believed that I have a potential to become successful but...

October is a difficult month. 

I was not a little girl when I lost my mother and I didn't have an evil stepmother but I understand the excruciating pain a child feels loosing a parent.