Dad died in January. It's my first Father's Day in sixty-six years without him. I don't know how to be with that truth. He was the most important person in my life. I was alone with him, holding his hand, when he took his final breath.
The last years weren't easy for him. I was glad when he shed the troubles of his worn out body and escaped to wherever kind, hard-working, beloved men go. His presence hasn't left me. He's the blue butterfly that flutters around the bougainvillea and threads in and out of my house. We commune in a language free of words.
But when I saw an ad for Father's Day, my heart lurched with pain, searing, immediate, deep. I was bereft knowing that this year I would not scan Amazon for a book with pictures of Norway, or stories about boyhood in the Midwest to send to him. When Dad stopped reading I knew his life-force was weak. He loved to read. When he was no longer interested in food, I mentally prepared for the inevitable. When the message reached me that he was failing, I took the next plane.
How will I navigate Father's Day without him? I need a plan, a ritual, something that will not allow the day to pass like any other day. Perhaps....
...I'll gather flowers. Dad loved them and taught me their names: bloodroot, honeysuckle, clover, buttercup, lady slipper, goldenrod, and many more. I followed his footsteps through fields of alfalfa bordered by marshy swamps as he pointed them out. None of those exist in this tropical climate, but Dad won't care if it's frangipani and heliconia instead.
I'll listen to some old Johnny Cash tunes, maybe strum a few lines of Down in the Valley. Dad loved to sing and play guitar and he taught me the chords. We spent hundreds of hours playing and singing together.
And because this is Bali and offerings are an integral part of every-day life, I'll prepare one for the ancestral spirit that is now my Dad. It will have raisins, chocolate-covered cherries, and the hottest chilies I can find. He's the only Norwegian I've known who popped them in his mouth like candy, grinned with sweat beading on his brow, and asked for more.
Then I'll play the video Jessa made with the song she sang at the funeral while her partner, Dan, accompanied her on Dad's old guitar and I'll cry. Of course I will. There have only been a few tears so far, but I'm ready. They're stored up behind my eyes like a pressure in my skull that reaches all the way to my heart. And it will be the first time in many years that I'll be with my Dad on Father's Day.
Background song Fall Down as the Rain lyrics by Joe Crookston. Guitar by Dan Gaustad and vocals by Jessa Walters and Dan Gaustad
This article was written by Sherry Bronson and appeared on her blog: http://writingforselfdiscovery.com