No Father's Day

A Note on Grief

I didn’t understand. So many friends and family have lost their fathers. Even my now deceased dad was one of us, his dad passing when I was a little girl. I’m now amongst the league of children with father’s who remain only in our memories, and photographs, and in our stories. My true father, the man who raised me up was imperfect, like the lot of us, and I think it’s those qualities; his flaws that I miss because they dull in contrast to the ways he was a perfect dad for me. When folks would speak of dead father’s I could not understand - and frankly, one will not be able to measure that loss until they cross that threshold. There’s a tender mutuality shared amongst those of us who have lost a parent. I’m grateful for those who have offered me that gentleness and I sincerely apologize to those I did not considered deeply enough when sharing their loss. I didn’t understand.

My girlhood was spent trying to decipher the meaning of having two fathers. My mother’s ex-husband, my biological forebear, was the biggest cause for my youthful embarrassment and later for a shame that I’m told not to carry. Still, I see his eyes, and very smooth skin, his smile and build when I gaze at myself in the mirror and witness the inheritance of a charismatic nature that I have made into my own but is with no question a part of a legacy. I am marked by him. When he died, a lot of those complicated feelings died along with him - freeing me in a lot of ways. Yes, it was sad, but I still had my Daddy.

When you really love someone you can never envision a life without them. At least I cannot. Even for sturdy pragmatists like myself - it can be impossible to imagine a world without your favorite people in them. How I define my favorites? People who know you, who see you, love you. People who feed you, care for you, check on your wounds. Folks who share with you, who give with no expectations and love without conditions - even when it becomes difficult for them to understand you. I’m in the tribe of the lucky, because I have a lot of favorites and am hopefully favorited myself. My daddy, papi, G$ was one of my favorites.

He never embarrassed me, always dressed so well (thanks to my mom, and later my sister and me), smelled so good and was just so chill. He took me to my first gun range, made banana pancakes and dry ass pork chops, played soca music on the AM station on car rides, told me stories of a young life filled with heartbreaks and uncertainty and instilled in me the kind of belief in oneself that only a person willing to raise a child who’s life they entered, as opposed to created, can. I never thought about his place in my world so completely until…well… his absence. Sometimes your favorite people are such big figures in your life you don’t realize they are the frame in which your life is pictured.

There are rituals in place that are meant to open and close the portals between the living and the dead. Living in this loud busy city of mine, it felt like our time to mourn my dad was truncated and compacted into a few transactions at the funeral home and a going-home ceremony that did the Christian rites. Still I was left with a vacancy, a void that wont ever be filled. This was a new kind of heartbreak, one that firmly established me as new to myself. Not sure how I feel about this terrain of unfamiliarity but alas I have no other choice but to accept it.

Pops loved the Knicks, NYC, his family and weed. So simple but so powerful for me at least because in the ways my heartaches on this first Father’s day without him, it swells because he was familiar. My dad would answer any questions his children would ask of him, truthfully. He was sensitive and often cried tears of joy. He was a crabby cancer who could be mean as hell, especially if his routine was disturbed. When reminiscing about the full picture of having him as a dad, I am lucky to have such crisp memories, and I hope to recall them on the days I where i wanna just call him up and talk. Today is one of those days.