Just Another Day

If I were to look on the calendar at this date, 8 years ago, there would be no indication that it would hold any significance. It was a Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, and across town my father was sleeping in his bed. Except that morning he would not wake up, and spent the day in a coma, while friends and family flew in and gathered around him and whispered words of love and comfort and assurance until late that night when he finally, quietly, peacefully, passed away.

On the first anniversary of his death, I sat across from my mother and said words I wasn't sure I meant: "It's just another day."

As time goes on, I hold on to those words with such fierceness that I've come to believe them. My father does not die again every May 25th. He only died once, and the sadness of that day is not something I want to relive, or memorialize. If I were to choose a date to remember him, it might instead be my wedding day - when he told me how proud he was of me, and how full his heart was with love for me. It might be the day I had Katie - when he stood nervously by my side and threatened my doctor and held my tiny daughter with his giant hands, so very carefully. Or it might be any of the countless days when I was a scared child, or a floundering teen, or a struggling young adult - when just his physical presence calmed me, and his faith in me made me believe in myself.

I do not miss him today more than any other day. I do not think of him any more than usual.I will honor him the best way I know how - by living my ordinary life. By loving my family and laughing plenty, and by remembering the best of his days, not the worst. I miss you, Daddy. Every day.

Four Days

I Would Like to Relive

1. The day Katie was born. All their births were wonderful, but Katie was the first. It was the only pregnancy blissfully free of doubt and worry, and every emotion was new and unexpected. I spent 9 months preparing for her arrival by reading every book I could get my hands on. On the day she was born, I forgot everything I read and I've spent the past 10 years trying to figure it out. On that day, I stopped being just Kelly and became Katie's Mom. What a gift - it was the best day of my life.

2. The day before my Dad was diagnosed with cancer. Until the doctor looked at my father and told him he had cancer, I lived in the world where young women think their young parents will never die. Until that day, Daddy was invincible, and that's my favorite way to remember him.

3. My wedding day. I married a handsome young man on a hot summer day. The day was just pregnant with possibilities - the things we could do, the places we could go, the family we could have. The day we met, I walked past him and he turned to his boss and said "One day, I'm going to marry that girl." Who knew?

4. Every ordinary day. Like today, when nothing special happened except the sun is shining and I am blessed a thousandfold with friends and family whom I love and who make me feel loved. When I get to have coffee with my friends and my kids yell and cry and kiss me for no reason and my husband asks me to take his clothes to the dry cleaners and I face down a mountain of laundry and, once again, lose.

It is the best day. It is the best life. Thank God.

Magical Thinking*

Sometimes, I smell my father. It never comes from a purposeful thought, but random and unbidden. Unlike my memories of his voice or his face, which always come slowly like a sunrise, the smell comes fast and furious, like a punch to the gut. It happened this morning, as I turned in my seat to unbuckle Julia at preschool. It was like he was there, sitting next to me. As always, it sends me into a panic as I search for a source - my coat, the seat, my hands. Other mothers must have walked by the car wondering about the crazy woman sniffing her air vents. And then slowly, it fades away, gone completely back into my memory by the time I've turned into the driveway.

Daddy was a fastidious man. Always neat and carefully groomed, the result of a disciplined nature reinforced by the United States Marine Corps. He ironed his jeans with an crease so sharp it sounded like a crack of lightening when he put them on. Even after a hard day's work, beneath the dirt and dust and sweat, you could still smell it. You could smell clean.

I read once that the sense of smell is the strongest, the one most bound to memory. Daddy must have read that somewhere, too. My mom told me he would always rush to put on cologne before we came over, so he could bury the memory of himself deep in toddler Katie's brain. Hoping that the memory of the way he smelled would linger after her true memories faded into the false ones of stories simply retold.

I spent the last year of his life memorizing the lines of his face and the way his hands felt. So that, when I needed to, I could close my eyes and see him next to me and feel my hand swallowed up in his. I never bothered to think about his smell. I didn't need to.

I know it is a trick of memory. There's probably even a name for it. It is the hardest memory - this mental blip is the closest I will be to him again in this lifetime. It's also the best, because for a moment, he is with me. For a moment, I choose not to believe that it's a false memory, a physiological hiccup. I choose to believe that he watches over me and my children. That he sends me signs and signals and smells. Maybe it's faith, maybe it's magical thinking.Whatever it is, it is mine, and I'm holding on to it.


*The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion is a look into her life in the year after her husband's death. Really insightful and beautiful.