December Update

Well, last week was the 1 year anniversary. Earlier this month when I flipped my calendar to December I noticed the small RIP I put on the block for December 11th. I knew it was totally morbid when I did it in the beginning of the year, but I knew I didn't want to forget what date it was. In the beginning, I could never remember. I didn't want that to happen. So I put it on the calendar. Anyway, so when I flipped my calendar to December and saw it there, my chest tightened and I had a brief moment of... I don't even know what of, but it was really uncomfortable. But I didn't realize that day when I felt my chest constrict for a brief moment, that that would be the worst I would feel in the upcoming weeks.

Therapy is going well. I switched therapists. There's something about a woman understanding the feelings that women have. I needed to have a different experience in therapy so I switched from my male therapist to a woman. She's a bit peculiar (in fact I'm starting to think all therapists are), but I totally feel heard now, which is what I need.

Anyway, we devoted all of my December 9th session to discussing my dad, what it was like to grow up, how did I handle the suicide. The end result is that my way of coping with this (and many other things) is to remove myself. In a way I think I like to feel damaged, like people might care about me more. But people don't give a crap. It seems they care for the 5 minutes after you tell them "my dad killed himself", but people really don't know how to handle hearing something like that.

Don't get me wrong - one friend and one coworker sent me e-cards that day to tell me they were thinking of me. And another friend inquired about a week later to see how I was because she knew this was the season. Let's just say that there are particular people in my life whom I wish had remembered at least that it's December, that's when the shit hit the fan last year, and could at least say to me something like "hey, I just want to make sure you're okay, I know that this is about when it happened, I'm thinking of you and am here for you if you need me." It's a huge thing that happened to me. I don't expect people to remember the date or anything. I just have this irrational idea that I want people to know I'm damaged, and I don't want to have to advertise "hey, my dad killed himself a year ago, can I get some attention?" It's stupid, I know. I could go on and on but I'll leave it at that.

So anyway, I made the round of phone calls on December 11th. Called my sisters, called my mom, called my grandmom (who didn't answer and I left a message and haven't heard back from yet). Of my sisters, my mom and I, we seem to be handling it pretty well. I mean, a year later, it's somewhat easier to deal with it because there was no real connection when he was around. I think that's the only reason that makes it not so difficult. I guess he did us a favor there.

But on December 27th we're having our "annual" family gathering with my dad's side of the family. It's a conscious effort to not lose touch with them. I've probably seen them more in the last year than I have in the last 3 years. I'm grateful that they've expressed the desire to stay in touch (minus one uncle). But so we'll all get together, me, my sisters, my mom, the kids, my aunt, uncle, my 2 cousins, and my grandparents. We won't spend too much time dwelling on the past. We'll spend the time catching up. Just enjoying those few hours for what it's worth.

So I'm grateful that at least my family understands what it's like to deal with this. It's easier to pick up the phone and call one of them and say "hey, do you want to talk about dad?" then it is to ask a friend. I know that if I were to ask a friend to talk about it with me, they'd listen. But they wouldn't know what to say. So it is what it is.

therapy works

I started going to actual therapy a few weeks ago. My main goal is to address my anxiety issues. But I have found it interesting that I haven't felt the need to talk about my dad yet. I credit that to me having this blog and utilizing it over the past few months whenever I felt I was having a hard time dealing with it all. Or maybe it's just because I have so much crap going on on a regular basis that I have to deal with before I get down to business. But truly, I think that this blog, and the amount of time that has passed has helped me come to a place where I feel okay.

So far I've found it difficult to post any of the truly bad memories I've had about my dad. There may come a day where I feel it's important to me to actually put it all in writing. But for now I think it's been good to have this blog to help me remember the good things about him. I still think there's more unearthing to be done. It's all just been buried deep underneath the weight of the bad memories. All in due time I guess...

dreams...

Well, throughout these past almost 10 months I've had a handful of dreams depicting my dad. I remember them mostly being more close to his end. In the beginning they were always violent dreams - him and I fighting in them, always a battle.

The other night I had an actual good dream about him - I mean, the dream itself wasn't all that great, it left me feeling somewhat unsettled. But his appearance was different. In this dream (mind you, dreams are so hard to explain in words) I parked my car in a parking lot. When I went to leave, my car was not there, but there was a tractor trailer parked in its place. Tractor trailers were supposed to park in a different area in the big parking lot, but this tractor trailer was where I had left my car. In my dream I understood it to be that I was supposed to drive the tractor trailer. So I pulled out of the parking lot, got a few blocks down the road and realized it didn't feel right. Then I turned around and took the tractor trailer back to the parking lot and there was an angry, gruff looking man, the owner of the tractor trailer. That's when dad appeared. Next thing I know I'm on the side of the road across the street, able to see what's going on, and my I could see my dad trying to calm the man down. Then dad's in front of me, but down below like the parking lot was not at street level. And I looked at him, gave him a thumbs up, then added the 2 thumbs up. I mouthed Thank You. And just as the words "I love you" were coming out of my mouth, he vanished. He didn't get to hear me say it.

Just as I was typing out the dream sequence, I realized the tractor trailer reference and wondered if it was supposed to correlate to how my dad died. I don't really know what to think of it, the entire thing. But I think this dream will stay with me always.

father-daughter dance...

A few weekends ago my husband and I were in North Carolina for his cousin's wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, the food was delicious. But I wasn't expecting the following to happen:

Cue the father-daughter dance.

I freaking LOST IT. It might be normal to see tears of joy at weddings. But I'm sure you could see by the look on my face for the entire hour that I could not control the tears from falling that these tears were not of joy.

Back when I was planning my wedding 2 years ago, Dad was still around, but we weren't really speaking. We never had the kind of father/daughter relationship that I will venture to say that most young women have. Dad was, of course, invited to the wedding, but I grappled and grappled with the decision to let him walk me down the aisle. The father-daughter dance was a definite no - for one, I'm not a dancer and was anxious enough over dancing with my new husband. It just would've been extremely awkward. You know how some girls have father-daughter dances in grade school? I never had that. So it was weird to me.

In largely using a wedding planning message board to plan my wedding, I was witness to the number of girls who were fortunate enough to have amazing relationships with their dads, and I was envious.

And so, after my dad died, I had so many unresolved feelings because not only did I choose to not have him walk me down the aisle (I chose my mom, she's the one who raised me and deserved the honor), not only did I never even consider doing a father-daughter dance - but my dad didn't come to my wedding - AT ALL.

Then of course he goes and kills himself. I can't even begin to explain the inner turmoil I feel over it.

But I guess being witness to the amazing relationship that my cousin-in-law has with her father, and seeing the love that he has for her - it just really broke me down - causing me uncontrollable tears in a place where I couldn't escape - at a wedding, 4 states from home, no car to go to, a bathroom full of women, mosquitos at the ready on the hot summer night. I was forced to just sit there at the table to deal with it.

bowling ball

I have my own bowling ball. How many people do you know actually have their own bowling ball? My mom and I are the only ones that I know of. I even have my own bowling shoes, and bowling ball bag. One might ask "why?", especially since I never go bowling - anymore. But there once was a time, I'd say about 5 years ago or so, where I did bowl. And that was because of my dad.

During the first 8 months after his death I found it really really difficult to find the good memories. There weren't many, and that's what makes it so hard - you have to trudge through all of the bad memories to find the good ones. Well, today bowling came up in conversation and I started to recall the day I bought my bowling ball.

This must've been during one of dad's upswings - a high, if you will, on the bipolar rollercoaster. He was on this kick for going bowling, and I joined in with him and mom. It didn't last long - I think because mom was starting to have issues with her wrist. But I remember going with him a few times to bowl. One day he even took me and my now-husband. Just the 3 of us.

I'm thankful for this memory being bowled into my pin-head.

You call this a funeral?!

Let me preface this by a little back-story:

My mom and dad separated and divorced when I was I think 21 years old. I'm now 26. The divorce was something I wanted for them since I was a kid - I'll get to that story another time. But after the separation and subsequent divorce my dad went down to Delaware to live with my grandmother. I'm grateful that she took him in. But I guess a man's a man, with a man organ or whatever, so my dad ended up getting hooked up with this woman from Latvia. She happened to have 2 teenage sons. After a short courting period where they interacted via internet, and I assume phone, and some trips back and forth between the countries, my dad brought this woman and her 2 kids to Delaware and married her. I'd never met her before the funeral. I knew practically nothing about the kids, not even what ages they were. But I knew that my dad just bought a ready-made family (when he already had one of his own).

Back to the mockery of a funeral...

I knew my dad was going to be cremated. They decided to have the funeral in Delaware and have a little luncheon afterwards (that's normal). For this reason I didn't expect friends or co-workers to attend. So my husband, my mom, my sisters and my niece, we all take the 2 hour drive down from Philly. We get there to this little white chapel, I had no idea about the luncheon arrangements. Here I'm figuring we'll just follow whoever to whereever. So my husband and niece were in the car with me. We get out, my mom and sisters hadn't shown up yet. No sight of my grandparents. And this woman is walking through the parking lot. I had no idea who she was and she says to me "what's your name?" I say Tricia. She says "Michael's daughter..." and then starts boo-hooing and hugging me. Ok, now I know who this woman is. I wanted to shove her off of me but I tried to be polite.

Finally all of my people are there, and we go into the chapel. When you walk in there was this little area for coats and stuff, with a mantle. I saw tons of pictures of my dad with his new family, none of my sisters and I. There seemed to be no organization to the entire thing. We all file into the church, and there might've been like 7 or 8 pews to sit in, we had no idea where to sit, nobody told us where to sit - so there were some pews on the side, I figured that would be the best place for us to sit considering. Ya know how at funerals there's a sort of receiving line for the family? Yeah, I don't know, there wasn't one of those. The pastor gets up and starts giving his little speech - NO MENTION of my sisters and I - but lots of talk of my dad's new wife and her children.

Before we went down for the funeral, I was aware that my grandmom thought that it would be nice if his girls could come up with something nice to say about dad. I'll tell ya - when you grow up with a dad who seemed to not care, who didn't create good memories with you - it's really difficult to come up with something. I ended up mustering something up, apologizing that we didn't have a better relationship, things like that, nothing really glowing about him, but just that I was sad he was gone and that things weren't different. When the pastor asked if anybody had anything they'd like to say about my dad, nobody stood up. I didn't have the guts.

But then he pulls out this paper, a letter from my dad's 2 adopted sons - SUPPOSEDLY - and I say supposedly because it certainly didn't sound anything like 2 teenage boys would write about anybody. It went on and on about how my dad was such a great role model for them. How my dad took them to Six Flags and rode the roller coasters with them (that's my dad - always a man of adventure - when it suited him). How happy they were that they had an actual family now and how upset they were now that he was gone.

Meanwhile, the pastor is reading all of this CRAP and I happen to notice the alter - a framed photo of my dad and his new family. WHERE ARE THE PICTURES OF MY SISTERS AND I?!?!?! I start bawling out of PURE ANGER. I'm whispering to my mom and sisteres "do you see that?!" What a mockery. And just thinking about it and seeing it, brings uncontrollable tears to my eyes through the entire service.

Back to the pastor - he starts talking about this man - I say to my mom "who is he talking about?" It sounded nothing like my dad, the man who lived in the same house I grew up in for 20 years. There was not one speck of truth in what was said. I guess when someone leads a life the way my dad did, there's really nothing much to say. Apparently my grandmom wanted to make him sound like a good person, being as the majority of the little chapel was filled with her friends. My dad didn't have friends - he screwed over every friend he had. That's who my dad was, only ever looking out for himself.

Anyway, come to find out that the "luncheon" is being held in the little fellowship hall off in the parking lot of the chapel. Seriously? Your SON died, and this is how you honor him? Good life, or not so great life, your SON deserves better in his memory. But of course none of us were paying for the funeral - my grandmom was.

To the point - my sisters and I were beyond angered and upset over the fact that we were not even recognized as his children, nobody, save for my aunt, uncle and cousins, grandmom and pop, even said boo to us. We all packed into the cars and left without attending the "luncheon".

can you say "suicide"?

I can - but I don't like to. It sounds so.... I don't know, I just much prefer saying "my dad killed himself." Maybe it's because there are less syllables. But really, it's the reality of the situation. I'm not quite sure what kind of impact that has on whoever may be listening to me talk about it.

the white pick-up truck...

Do you remember the different cars your parents went through while you were growing up? I do. I remember my mom driving a ratty station wagon while my dad was driving a silver Monte Carlo (or so, in my head, these 2 collided in the space time continuum). One day the monte carlo was "stolen". I remember vaguely something about the car being found a few blocks away from the apartment we were living in, stripped of its doors. Then I remember my mom having a used Ford Taurus while my dad had a pick-up truck. After that pick-up truck, that's when he started driving white pick up trucks - Ford F-250s to be exact. The F-150 wasn't big enough for him.

So, the "intentional" car accident (in which my father met his Maker) occurred while driving a new-er F-250 which my grandmother was financing for him. Perhaps in the course of my "therapy" here I'll touch more on how he used my grandmother. Anyway, after the "accident" my husband did a little google research and found an article about it. Including a picture of the scene.

This is the story I got that fateful day:

My phone rang, it was my Aunt Lois, my god-mother and my dad's brother's wife). We didn't hear from my dad's side of the family too much at that point (which was to change after dad's death). So imagine my surprise when she was ringing my cell phone. This is how I remember it:

me: Hey Aunt Lois! What's up?!
AL: Hey hunny, I have some bad news... about your dad... I really didn't want to have to make this phone call to you... your dad's been in an accident, he killed himself.
me: WHAT?! What kind of an accident?
AL: He crashed his truck.
me: What? Was anybody else hurt? (in my head I'm thinking he steered his truck into oncoming traffic)
AL: No, thankfully. He found a road with a tractor trailer parked at the end of it. He drove right into it.

So, my dad drove his white pick-up truck into the back of a parked tractor trailor - are you having the same images I had and still have? Compound that by seeing this picture of the scene of the "accident". With a crane lifting up the remains of the tractor trailor up off of the smashed pick-up truck.

The shittiest part about this whole thing? Apparently there was some guy standing off to the side at some place, I'm not really sure of the surroundings, but I'm told that he saw my dad reverse his pick-up truck, then just floor it to the end. I know what thoughts I have - I can't imagine what kinds of thoughts this poor innocent bystander had or may still have.

Getting to my point - I see white pick-up trucks everywhere. My first day back to work after it happened was hard, and so were the first few months. I travel on I-95, do you know the sheer number of tractor trailors that travel that interstate? It's a lot. Tons. I see them every.single.day. So it's kinda difficult for me to see the rear-end of a tractor trailor. Among the number of white pick-up trucks I see on a daily basis.

After 8 months, it's getting easier.

why?

Why do I need to be my own personal therapist? In short - my dad killed himself on Dec 11, 2007. Ohhhh the many things you think of when something like that happens. But, for starters, this is what happens when you find out your dad killed himself (written the night of the day I found out):

Well, first, there's the standard "WHAT?!" "HOW?!"The question "why" doesn't even cross your mind, because you already know and knew this day would come. But on a rational level you never expect it to really happen.

Then a wave of mixed emotions crashes over you. You're not quite sure how you're supposed to feel because it's been 2 years since you've seen him and you always felt like he couldn't be bothered by being a dad. It's officially been 1 year since the last time I even spoke with him. So after letting it sink in for a few minutes, you start shaking, teeth chattering, and then all of the thoughts start running through your mind. You feel nauseous. You find out he left a tape, ending "Dear Jesus, please forgive me for what I'm about to do" and all you can do is feel for him, and at the same time, wonder if he thought about me, if he might've said he loved me on that tape.

So after letting the awful images run through your head, crying at every thought you have - the random memories, the picture you keep of him in your mind, the way he talked, the way he moved his hands, the realization that he cut off every relationship he had with his family - you finally start to get sleepy, so you go off to bed, feeling nauseous. Once you're in bed you can't stop the swirling of thoughts going on in your mind. You're pleading with God to stop the images. And finally, you don't know when, but you fall asleep. Only to wake up a few hours later. You make a mental note to call your doctor, who knows your dad and asks about him everytime you go into the office, first thing in the morning to say these words "my father killed himself. Can the doctor give me something to help me sleep?" You're still nauseous, so you get up, go into the bathroom and nothing comes, and you yawn, and mid-yawn your face scrunches up and all of a sudden you're crying again. But the heaving never comes. And when you're not crying, you're nauseous.

My head hurts. I'm sad. For SO MANY reasons, it's difficult to articulate. But the feeling I feel now is sadness, and it weighs heavy. Because I cannot imagine the desperation he must've been feeling to do this. And to try to comprehend it, it just brings me to tears. I'm sorry that things were the way they were between us, but I still feel like there was no other way for them to be, being that we're all just human. So I try not to feel regret. The last 10 years in this regard have been difficult. And how fitting it is that the entire past week the sadness of not having a "dad" has been weighing on your heart heavily, bringing you to tears when you think about those who do. Because not only did I never have a "dad," but now I dont even have a dad. And so you cry. Because you're so sad, for so many things.