Bye, Dad

She pulled down her shirt sleeves and adjusted the collar before she went inside the school. She was already sweaty and thankful that there was air conditioning in her classroom. She hoped no one would ask her why she had a high-collared, long sleeve shirt on when it was so warm out. She walked stiffly through the halls on the way to her class. The rushing of the other students worried her because if they bumped into her, she would hurt. She quietly stepped into her classroom and her friend, Stacey, waved at her. She walked over and sat down gingerly. Stacey’s smile faltered, but she took and deep breath and asked Tess how she was and continued to prattle on about her older brother and how gross it was that he was always hogging the phone to talk to Britney. Stacey said Britney’s name with a sneer and a head waggle.

As Tess sat and carefully pulled out her book and notebook from her desk, she saw the eyes of Mrs. Thompson on her. She smiled at Tess, and Tess smiled back. Tess busied herself needlessly with getting organized in her desk, but she knew that Mrs. T had an inkling of Tess’ home life. She couldn’t look Mrs. T in the eye. It hurt too much. Class started soon thereafter, the chatter dying down and the routine of her day kicking in. Tess thought she just might get through the day, a normal, quiet, predictable day.

They read from their books, and they practiced identifying parts of sentences and then on to math. Tess hated math. Language was her thing. She loved words and the way they could take you places. But, math was a necessary evil, as her mother said, so she paid attention and did her best to memorize the rules of math being taught at the moment. A dreaded pop quiz for history. The whole class groaned. Tess didn’t like history either. Learning about the past was fun but having to remember all the names of people and dates was tough. Mrs. T handed stacks of the pop quizzes to the front of each row, and each student took one and passed it back.

Tess didn’t think before she reached for the packet being held in front of her by Jamie, a cute boy who had the best laugh and was nice to her. As she reached up for the quiz stack he was holding, her sleeve crept up and revealed dark mottled splotches of purple and fading green on her arm. Mrs. T was there before she could react and fix her sleeve, and quickly handed her a quiz and passed the stack to Amy, who was behind Tess. Tess looked around at her friends, who sat close to her, and no one looked at her. Stacey sat with eyes wide and asked her if she was okay. Mrs. T. rested a hand on her shoulder as she walked back up the row. Tess wasn’t okay and she didn’t know if she ever would be.

That was 43 years ago. The memory came back to her as she sat in the funeral home and waited for James to come into the room. He came in and settled himself, and talked in a quiet, calm manner. It made Tess uncomfortable. He talked about cremation and urns and prices for a funeral and reception. She sighed heavily. He only wanted to be cremated and buried with his mom. No funeral, no reception. Military honors if she could figure all that paperwork out. James asked her questions she couldn’t answer, some because she didn’t know and some because the grief was like being underwater. She couldn’t breathe, and everything in her vision was cloudy.

Her dad was a man that she resented for many years. She went from one therapist to the next before she had determined that the shame of abuse that she felt wasn’t something that belonged to her; it was the legacy that he passed on to her. He was abused, too, in his youth, and although he loved her more than anything, he wasn’t strong enough to stop the cycle. Tess was determined to stop it. She had made the decision that she was not going to have kids, and if she did, it wasn’t until her anger was something she didn’t grapple with daily. Until she could see the person hurting her and not the need to hurt back. It was hard work, but she got there.

When she got married, she was open about her past. Her husband was the first person to say he was sorry that she experienced that instead of making her feel like it was her fault. He understood her hesitation. Funny how God makes us see a path in our lives. She got pregnant by accident and ended up losing the baby seven weeks into her pregnancy. That was a blow she didn’t expect at all. And she mourned the person that baby would have become.

It took them a year and fertility medications to get pregnant after that, and she was invested in it! She couldn’t wait to be a mom. When she finally got the positive pregnancy test, she was so thankful. And even with a colicky baby with her days and nights mixed up, Tess had only patience and love for her little girl. Six months after her daughter was born, she found out she was pregnant again. The best “oops” ever! Her son was born, and she had two babies sixteen months apart, which was a challenge, but Tess loved every minute of it.  

Late one night, she was up with a sick baby, and she started thinking about her dad. Her brain or maybe her heart took her to how lonely his childhood must have been with the abuse he encountered at the hands of one stepfather after another. He had no siblings either, and it was just him. Tess was an only child, too, and her childhood was very lonely. She was too shy to play with other kids, and she knew that some of the moms knew about her and didn’t invite her to parties because of that. So Tess sat at home and grew her imagination and dove into her love of words with reading and writing stories.

She looked at her sleeping daughter, hair matted to her face in fever, and felt the overwhelming love for her. Her daughter needed her momma. When she was ill or hurt herself, she held her arms up to Tess and cuddled into her. As babies, kids, and even as adults, we need to be soothed and comforted. Her daughter needed Tess to be there as she faced a nasty cold and the discomfort of fever and congestion. Was anyone there for Tess’s dad when he was ill? Did he have to face fears alone? Was there anyone there to tell him it would be okay?

It was this realization that had her silently sobbing into the pillow next to her daughter. It had been five years since she spoke to him. She had written him off. No one blamed her. But the truth was, she felt awful about it. She deserted him just like everyone else did. The next day when she had time to herself, she sat down and wrote him a letter. She wanted him to meet his grandchildren. He hadn’t yet, and it was time. Of course, she needed to see that he was no longer the angry man he once was. Her children were her first priority, and she wouldn’t expose them to the man he was. Time and poor health had seemed to change him. During the time she wasn’t in contact with him, he wrote to her and tried to open communication between them. Her anger towards him was still fresh back then, but somehow, becoming a parent and seeing how that changes you and makes you selfless, she thought maybe, he loved, but because no one had ever taught him safety and love and protection, he didn’t know how to love the right way. Maybe, she still had time to show him.

And so it went. The slow process of getting to know him again began, and he wasn’t the man he used to be. He was open and humble and wanted to know his grandbabies.  He had become the big teddy bear, Grandpa, to her son and daughter and loved them with a fierceness she knew he was hesitant to show Tess. Although Tess had forgiven him, she was still the protector of her kids. He called her Momma Bear. He took the whole family fishing every summer and to aquariums and to play in the park until his health became such that he couldn’t anymore.  

When Tess went through her divorce, he was there to talk her through things. To support her. He walked her through how to change the showerhead in her new apartment and celebrated with her when she did it. When she met a new man, he was there to tell her that she deserved love. When she got remarried, even though she knew he could barely afford to come, he was there, dressed up, toting his oxygen tank, smiling the whole time. Her dad had become her friend.

He was the kind of man who told the same old stories over and over again and laughed a little too loud. What a difference from the man who was so full of anger and violence in her youth. The hardest part about the whole thing was that Tess had to learn to forgive him without an apology. He never admitted to it. Once, when she was in her teens, he alluded to what happened in her childhood. How helpful it would have been for him to say, I am so sorry for what I put you through in your childhood. Simple as that. Yes, she would have work to do to get out of the victim mentality and move on from there, but that would have been HUGE! Maybe it was hard for him to look at who he was. Maybe he worried that an apology would open that wound, and he would lose his family again. She could only guess.

The kids grew, and he did his best to stay in touch as they traversed high school and college and moved out on their own. He became proficient in smartphones and social media and texting and sharing funny memes and interesting stories that he found on the web. Tess always made sure to include him on happenings and remind him about birthdays as his mind started to slip a little. His health took a steep decline, and although he promised her he would be around for a while, the day came when she received a call that he was gone.  

He had wanted to come to visit. He was only a couple of hours away by car. She had put him off over and over, and now, it was too late. Too late to sit with him over dinner and listen to him go on and on about his happier, healthier days. Tell stories about when Tess was a baby for the hundredth time. Tell the same off-color jokes. His heart gave out on him. One minute he was there, and the next, he was gone. They said they did everything they could to bring him back, but they couldn’t. So, there she sat. She asked to see him before they cremated him. It was her dad, but he was still and quiet. She urged him to wake up and tell her a story one last time. He didn’t. He left no will, he left no instruction, and in the end, she realized that her father was someone she barely knew. Maybe she did, to a point. She knew his heart. Maybe he finally learned to love the right way.

The weeks that passed after his sudden death were a blur. His half-sisters came to his burial, and Tess put up a brave front. Even for her husband and her kids. As the grief came, she would often go walk outside and cry alone. Her brain, forever the treasonous trickster, would send thoughts to the forefront of her mind, thoughts like, ‘I haven’t heard from Dad in a while, I should check on him’. And that would bring a bout of fresh tears.

She realized she was so lost in her own life that she never took the time to really get to know her dad. That realization hit her when someone asked her where he was born, and she didn’t know. Her dad didn’t like to talk about his past, and she never pushed it, but that wasn’t an excuse. Going into his house and seeing where he died on the floor of the kitchen, the medical trash still there from where the paramedics tried to revive him, gutted her. The way he lived wasn’t good. There was trash and junk everywhere, and she was even angrier at herself for not being there to help him. Everyone told her that he was too proud, and there were times she tried to go to his house, and he wouldn’t let her. There were times they offered help, and he declined. But was she justifying that she really wasn’t there for her dad?

Months later, Tess finally had the courage to turn on his cell phone. There was a pin to get in. She had no idea. Six digits. She sat and thought. It would have to be something easy for him to remember. She typed in her birthday and the phone unlocked. As she looked through his social media accounts and his pictures, and some of his texts, she realized that he was someone that gave of himself in every way that he could. Maybe the way he lived his life before he died was to atone for what he did in his younger years to her and her mom. They lived in fear and with bruises for a long time until her mom was able to pull them away from him.

Every password and lock screen that she came across was some iteration of her birthday. She was able to see into who he was as a person, the dad she didn’t know. His love of food, which she knew, he was great a making soups! He would share recipe after recipe and pictures of food he made with his foodie group on Facebook. He would send well wishes to others suffering in grief. He would send jokes on a daily basis to bring smiles. Tess decided to post on her dad’s Facebook page that he had passed, and the sheer number of messages she received was amazing. People he hadn’t even met but had been friends online with were heartbroken. Maybe that was all she needed to know about her dad. That he gave of himself in his later years in ways he couldn’t when he was younger.

Tess’s birthday came and went, and the absence of a goofy birthday card with his lilting script and silly gifts was hard to deal with. Every birthday, a box came filled with celebration poppers, her favorite candies, and little fun games, and even though he struggled financially, there was always money in that card. In a way, he was giving her chunks of her childhood back. Weirdly, on that first birthday, after he died, she had hoped that something would come. Nothing did. Later, she hoped that she would find a letter saying goodbye in his house. That closure never came.

One sleepless night, as she stared through the darkness at the light on the ceiling, listening to her husband quietly breathing, she remembered a picture of her dad from a long time ago when he lived on the coast. He had lived along the Oregon coast, and the beaches there were foggy in the early morning and lined with craggy cliffs and driftwood. She remembered visiting him there once. His house was right on the beach. Ten minutes through trees and you came to a rickety wooden staircase that led to the salty-smelling beach. He used to walk in the early morning and watch the sun burn the fog away.

Someone had taken a snapshot of him walking down the deserted beach in the fog, in his old army fatigue green jacket, same ol’ ballcap, and walking stick. His back was to the camera, and his head was down. This picture, it stuck with Tess. Maybe it was his life in an image. Walking alone. Weight of the world on his shoulders. She didn’t know what happened to that picture and the album it was in. She wanted to find that picture again. She made a mental note to look for it.

Later that night, in sleep, she dreamt. The picture of him on that Oregon beach came to life. The fog swirled in the breeze. The rising sun hazy through the mist. Her dad was walking down that beach, ocean on one side and driftwood on the other. In her dream, he stopped and turned to look at her. He stood for a minute, then he slowly smiled and waved. She saw him take a breath and turn and walk into the fog, fading until he was gone. ‘Bye, Dad’, she yelled after him, waving. And to herself, quietly, ‘Bye, Dad’. She stayed in the dream and watched a glorious sunrise through tear-filled eyes. Then, with one last look into the clearing fog, Tess turned and walked away.