In my adult life, I’ve never been an overly emotional person. I never let things get to me. I rarely cried (until recently, ugh). I thought I was a basically happy person. But maybe I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with emotion now because I somehow opened the emotional floodgate that I closed a long time ago.
I remember exactly when I closed it too. It was intentional, though at the time I didn’t mean for it to be permanent, or long term. A week before my 19th birthday, my dad died of lung cancer, August 31, 1998. I was at college, 675 miles from home. When I left home to drive back to college at the beginning of August, I knew it was the last time I would see him. I specifically remember telling him that I loved him. I wanted to make sure I told him that. A few weeks later, I got a call in my dorm from my Aunt, telling me he had passed away. I watched the movie My Girl that evening, and cried over the loss of my father.
The following morning, I drove myself to the airport to fly back home for the funeral. None of my college friends knew my dad had cancer. I didn’t tell anyone, because I didn’t want their pity. At the airport was the last place I remember really crying. My aunt had called the airline and bought the ticket for me to come home. When I got to the counter to get the ticket and check in for the flight, the lady at the counter said that I needed to present her with the credit card used to buy the ticket. I started crying, told her why I was flying home and why I didn’t have the credit card. She marked it down as a bereavement flight and got me my ticket.
Another aunt picked me up from the airport and took me home. My mom seemed to be doing okay. Like me, I think she had prepared herself for this. My brother wasn’t doing as well. He wasn’t crying or being overly emotional, but I could just tell that he wasn’t okay. He was much closer to my dad than I had been. My dad worked nights my entire childhood, and I only really ever saw him at dinner on weekends. He spent most of his weekends in his work shed, making things out of wood. My brother would spend time with him there, but I wasn’t really into tools and sawdust. The time I spent with my dad was fewer and farther between.
He did teach me to drive though, a memory I will always have with me. He wasn’t much of a talker, so he just explained the basics and then took me on some back roads outside of town to practice. There was no shoulder on the road, and every time a car would come the opposite direction, I would nudge over to the right, afraid I was too close to the oncoming traffic. He never said a word, but eventually I was moving over to the right far enough that he pulled his arm in from the window, and then started leaning towards me. He was concerned I was going to take out a mailbox!
It was just after I got my license that he learned he was sick. My new driving skills were used a couple of times to drive him to the hospital to have fluid drained from his lungs so that he could breathe easier. He tried to quit smoking, but failed, having smoked for about 30 years.
My parents drove down to Mobile, AL with me to take a tour of the college I wanted to attend. We had to stop once so that my mom could give my dad a shot. I don’t even know what the shot was for, but he was undergoing chemo at the time. He had already lost some weight at that point.
I graduated high school at 17. One of the last happy pictures I have with my dad is at my graduation. He hated large groups of people and rarely came to school events. I was thrilled he came. Just before my 18th birthday, I headed off to college. A little over a year later, he was gone.
At the funeral is when I closed the floodgates. I was with my mom and brother when we went up to view the body. My mom and brother were both crying, and my mom squeezed my hand, really tight. That was the moment. I decided to be the strong one, for them. Someone needed to hold us together, I thought.
I didn’t cry at the funeral. I have rarely cried since. Only movies involving animals dying would make me cry. (Hachi. What a terrible movie to play for a bunch of people on a plane to vacation on Maui.) But now I seem to have opened the floodgate. I suppose it’s a good thing. I need to let my emotions be felt, and be free. But currently I feel like I’m drowning in them. I know I just need to navigate through the white waters to the calmer, steadier flow below. I’ll get there, it just takes time.
Having this happen when I’m in a place where there isn’t anyone who really knows me, where none of my friends are, has been hard. Thankfully, my best friend of 20 years, whom I haven’t spoken with much in the last few years, has reconnected with me, at a time when it seems like we both need it. We are helping each other through the rough patches we find ourselves in. At the beginning of May, we are even taking a two week trip to Europe, just the two of us. It’s something to look forward to, and something I really need. To reconnect with my roots, remember where I came from.
The next time I’m in my home town, I plan to go and visit my father’s grave. It’s been 16 years since he died, and I have never been to his grave. I’ve been home plenty of times, and passed by the cemetery plenty of times, but never gone in.
I think it’s time to come full circle.
Invisible Angie 