Four Years

Sometimes I can still smell him – or something like him- in my parent's closet, standing at his dresser. If I close my eyes, nuzzle my nose into his old shirt and breathe deep, he's there. It helps if I've just opened his bathroom cabinet and taken a whiff of his Eternity bottle. It generally happens only in those spaces- the bathroom and closet. His truck is gone, his office is no longer his own, and the garage has been cleaned out at least twice since he walked among the clutter. 

Five years sounds like a long time – but when I stack my acute grief – which had its claws in me for at least two years and the almost 3 years of pandemic life –it's five wobbly years. Full-to-the-brim with grief, change, introspection, laughter, pain, messy rooms, a messier car, family game nights, and Topo Chico. I won't ever eat that salad from that place again. 

I was stress eating a salad in the hospital – in the middle of a Whole 30 – when I went back to my dad's hospital room to say goodbye –greeted by my sisters' screams – soul ripping apart. He was already gone. James and Deborah – his intensive care nurses, voices hollow from knowing this is where we would end up. I called all the people we could think of with my sister. My hometown mayor answered the phone from the funeral home. In a voice riddled with disbelief, he said, "Roy Miller, I know him." They bore the same surname, but their only relation was friendship. After the immediate business of death was finished, I waited outside the hospital room – watching through the glass as my mother said goodbye to the body of my father – a person she had known and loved since she was 17. Forty-six years she knew this person, loved this person, fought with and for this person – gone. I haven't done anything for 46 years. 

I crawled into my hand-me-down Jeep Cherokee in the hospital parking lot and wailed. I drove the 3 miles home, where my friends hugged me, helped me pack, and trepidatiously watched me drive off to my parent's home in the bitter cold. I had to stop at Raceway off 20 West to buy radiator fluid. I remember walking into the gas station feeling unhuman – otherworldly – knowing these other people had no idea how my life had just gone from before to after. I had trouble putting the fluid in my car; a guy saw it and asked to help. I wanted him to hug me and tell me it would be okay – this stranger – I wanted him to right the wrong and hold up my crumbling sky. In a meek, disbelieving voice, I told him that my dad had just died. He was gracious and thunderstruck by this woman with the voice and posture of a girl melting from shock. 

When we arrived home around 12am, we discovered my parents' friends had built a fire in my dad's beloved fireplace. They had turned on the lights in the living room and kitchen so that when we walked into the space our dad loved, dreamed up, and made his own but would never inhabit again, it was warm and filled with light. A gift I didn't know I needed. The rest of that year – 11.5 months is a blur – stuck to my memory as survival with a heaping side of tears and reruns of Parks and Rec. 

Five years - dad. I don't know who I'd be if I had not had to slosh and slog my way through the time without you. I'm married to grief - finding it in all things - my constant companion. It makes the joy and delight extra spicy. It's how you preferred it all. I've got a Ph.D. in the art of the ache - we could chalk it up to my Enneagram 4 - the sweet ocean of longing, as some have coined it. It's one of the few things all of us with skin on our bones experience - loss. Whatever you're up to - drinking in a pub with your heroes and your bestie, Al, canoeing with Lewis and Clark, or joking with Jesus - I hope it's grand. I love you. Thank you.