The pieces of the heart that have been ripped away from me

Odds are good that if I asked where you were on June 11, 2000, you wouldn’t remember. At various points, I was staring at the walls waiting for the phone to ring, fidgeting nervously at a low-fare travel agency and lying on my bed waiting for the night to tick away.

I’ve always intended to write something meaningful and significant about that day my dad died. Every year on the anniversary of his death, I tell myself that this will be it. And every year, the day comes and goes, blanketed in misery and remembrance, and I end up crawling into my wordless bed making promises for another year, another day, another memory.


So tonight not being a particularly meaningful date for me, I was hoping I would be able to share the meaning of life with you, or barring that, the meaning of death. I thought perhaps I could wrap up the last five years of grief and loneliness and package it as Experience. Show you the resilience of the human spirit. But like the endlessly blank pages of the 'anniversary musings', the truth remains. I can’t make the death of my much loved father into a lesson in Experience.

Since that day, June 11, 2000, I have learned more about dad than I ever knew before. I didn’t really know the reaches of his life. I didn’t know him as his friends did - those aging, rough men that crowded into the Kosy Korner for coffee and gossip every morning. I didn’t know the many lives he touched until I saw the sea of faces at his memorial service, the sprays of sympathy cards delivered to the house, the flowers that arrived from across the province and the country. I saw his life’s work in the devastation written in the eyes of people I had never met before, never even heard of - who reeled at the thought of him being absent from their lives. I saw it in the shaking hands of his friends from the Rotary Club and the teary-eyed faces of the men from the hunting camp.

Maybe we don’t know anyone truly until they’re gone. As my sister and I stoically gathered memorabilia to display at the memorial service, I wondered what secrets we would find. Would we find evidence of his double life? Did he have another family somewhere? What would we uncover in the drawers of his bureau, in the pockets of his jeans? What would we uncover that would shock us?

The answer was…nothing. What we found was everything my father was. There were no surprises, no hidden secrets. There was no shame. There was just a man, 58 years old, and the trail of his everyday life, toothbrush still out, deodorant uncapped, glasses still on the counter.

I’m not sure the past years have made me stronger or smarter. In fact, I’m convinced that I know less now than I did then. I can tell you this though: life will just happen to you. Bad things will happen and you may never be able to find any reason. Worse yet, it’s possible that there may not be any reason at all. Some things simply are and in the wake of them, we have the choice to soldier on or curl up and refuse growth outright.

For me, I have the sense, if only slightly, that I am alright. As a family – and as individual people – we have had to figure out a way to survive this, to keep going, to live our lives and to know joy. We had to step out like newborn fawns on shaky, unsure legs. The passage of years and the lessening of the pain isn’t an ending. It’s the beginning of recovery. An emergence from darkness. A chance.

I have his watch. I have his glasses. I have his wedding band that I wear like a talisman around my neck. Those things are part of my everyday life. But I also have a secret. In the very back of my closet, behind boxes, an old pair of skates and discarded books there’s an old flannel hunting shirt buried in a plastic bag. I hardly ever think of it. Very rarely touch it or move it. I don’t discuss it. I don’t share it. Sometimes though, I open up the bag and bury my face in it. And the essence of who my dad was, his scent, his presence, surrounds me. And sometimes that's almost enough.

We are confusing and confused beings, our strength and vulnerability battling within us, our ability to feel love directly connected to our ability to feel pain. I can tell you that everything – virtually every single thing – in my life has changed, not even so much because of the absence of my father but because life has shown me what it can deliver.

"When someone you love dies and you aren’t expecting it, you don't lose him all at once; you lose him in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming and his scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in his closet and drawers. Gradually you accumulate the parts of him that are gone. Just when the day comes - when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that he's gone forever - there comes another day, and another specifically missing part." – John Irving