My dad…one year later
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Tag Archives: grief
Week 3
Time is now counted for me in a different way. How long it’s been since my father died. I still get a pit in my stomach when I write that. I still don’t totally believe it. I like when I get a few moments where I fool myself into thinking he is just away, not gone.
Last week Mark and I went to Miami. It was for a promotion that Coke Rewards is doing, giving money to State Parks. I was paid to go and cover it for my blog. Mark came too so we could have sometime together, as it has been awhile. It took us 24 hours to stop talking about worries and problems and enjoy ourselves. We were gone for roughly 60 hours so we had to relax fast. We ate at Zuma, Cool Miami and at Sr. Martinez, cute place, good drinks.
When we first got there I was excited to see the light of Miami, I have always liked it and use to live there part time. Then I thought of my dad as a boy in Jacksonville. I get lost in my head. Then I get distracted. Then we are on the beach and I remember so fondly my dad flying out to Miami to be with me while I filmed a show for Discovery. I am so glad he did that. We had so much fun. I have pictures of us on the beach. He went with me and my crew to dinner at Joe’s stone crab. He loved meeting everyone and everyone loved him.
We swam out into the warm waters and I said to Mark, “I just didn’t know how bad I was going to feel when my dad passed.” I think of that about 10 times a day how clueless I was to this state.
Mark said, “that’s because you never know how gone, gone is.”
Yeah, couldn’t he at least be on Facebook? Or send me postcards. I am staring at his photo right now and still can’t believe I cant lean my head on his shoulder or hold his hand.
Cecily and I were going through some of his scrap books and old photos for the memorial we are planning. I wish we had done that before (here is my dad with then Gov. Jerry Brown), when we could have asked him questions. We took them into the house and my mom said right away, “ask me”.
I’m so lucky to have a family to go through this with. Thanks again to everyone who posted condolences, it is appreciated. I won’t assume again that a friend doesn’t need my attention when a loved one passes.
Sigh, the start of the 4th week begins.
A Grievous Loss
I don’t know if this is news outside of Los Angeles, but it’s a story that has a lot of meaning in our home.
A very nice 17 year old girl was killed Friday. She went to the same school members of my family go to, so it seems a little closer to us, even though I didn’t know Lily Burk. But one thing I have learned of late is when you read about something bad in the paper that something bad happened to someone, it really has. I know that seems obvious, but when I read bad things, sad, hard things I think I try to think of ways in which they don’t affect me. To try to keep me safe. Like, “Well, I wouldn’t have gone hang gliding in a rainstorm.” Or, “Well maybe they got some insurance money for their house in the hurricane zone.”
Being a victim of the Madoff thing taught me that. And I certainly can’t detach from this story. She was only a few miles from where we live, it was broad daylight when some piece of shit abducted her to try to get some money. Her body was found the next day.
She is an only child and the pain her parents are in is unimaginable. My sister said today she couldn’t sleep last night for thinking of their pain. Mark and I did sleep, but when we would wake they were the first the thing we thought of. It’s too scary, too sad.
How would one ever get past this? Really, why would one? A death is hard in of itself, but their child was murdered. A National Merit Scholar, she had the lead in the school play, she was somebody. There are no words, and I can’t help but personalize it. I can’t but think, “How do you keep your children safe?” She was driving errands in what is reported to be the the third safest city in America (NYC and San Jose are ahead). She wasn’t a solider who died saving others. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
All that love and care her parents lavished on her. The joy she brought them… ah, I ‘m sorry I’m not funny today. Another day… but my heart is heavy for this family and terrified for my own.