Memories and More Healing
September 22, 2022 was the third anniversary of my father’s passing. This year it felt so much different than the last several years. It was more emotional for not only me, but my mom too. It’s like the shock of his transition and the last two years finally wore off bringing forth more awareness.
In the days, weeks, and months after, the lack of his presence and warmth would be strongly evident in every normal everyday activity at my parent’s, from the seats we had for meals as well as when we watched television or sat talking on their balcony.
When we sat at the kitchen island, it was my mom to the left, me in the middle, and my dad to my right. For the first few months, my mom took even the placement away as well as everything else from his seat – a way for her to work through his absence. Every time, I sat down there, I saw him in my mind’s eye yet saw his place empty. I was working to rectify the emotional and mental displacement of his energy in their place.
I was hyper-sensitive to the fact my dad was missing and not seated beside me. Visualizations of him surfaced frequently as my mom’s routine had her giving me my dad’s coffee cup – and I did not want to hurt her more by pointing it out at that time. It was only this year when we spoke of how certain actions and experiences are like a muscle memory response that it came up. During that first year, it was like I could see him drinking the coffee through me and the way he held silverware and ate also rose in my mind. It was a very challenging walk through the hours, days, and weeks that followed.
I lived with my parents for the first thirty years moving with them from our small hometown in Pennsylvania of less than five hundred people with two lane roads to part of the metro area in Georgia with a five-lane road just beyond our apartment complex. We had a lot of first experiences together as well as my dad and I worked at the same college, he as a dean of the school of arts and sciences while I was in the development and college relations office handling donations to the school. We learned to work through issues that arose both in the workplace and at home. We were each other’s support system as we went through three of their parents passing as well as several close colleagues while there. They retired early two years after I moved to Arizona when my dad had an initial stent put in after a heart episode.
One of the last weeks my dad was at home, I sensed his pacemaker defibrillator. It felt like it was under my own skin when sitting next to him on the couch. It was the oddest and most disconcerting experience as I did not understand why. I noticed that I felt it stretching and pushing outward against my skin like it was something new, not that it had been there for five years. He also for the first time spoke about his childhood experiences and his maternal grandmother who only knew Italian and how kind she was with him. After she passed, he lost his connection to the language as his mom and dad spoke different dialects. My dad was an only child and very scholastic. He shared how the other kids picked on him a lot at school. So, family members protected him in various ways.
This year and in 2019, I was visiting with the same pet family during those last weeks leading up to the 22nd. This year, it had a very surreal feel to it. In many ways those days are etched in my mind. I was using my parents place as a home base to spend the most time I could with my dad, being supportive of my mom during the situation while also engaging her after the day’s visits at the place where my dad was residing, so she and I processed the day’s experiences. It helped us make sure each other ate meals – and more healthy options. During times like this, we can go into emotional eating patterns, often wanting sweet things as we try to find the sweetness in life that is absent for us in those moments. Likewise, this year, I was staying there while the flooring at the townhouse I rent was redone. Once again, we were able to help one another process the emotions that were showing up.
One of the things that helped my mom and I to move through the early days and weeks of grief when getting together was doing new things, going to new restaurants, using new paths to drive to places as every place had an emotional memory attached to it with my dad. She and I also hiked as much as we could to help us move the energy which helped us talk through anything that came up. My dad enjoyed walking around the neighborhood, but not being in nature.
In reflection, I find that these experiences that jar our memories often do so to show how far we have come as well as help us accept and heal some of the situations we were not able to before.
