Bull-riding off into the Sunset

Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

– Pema Chodron

My dad passed away last night. 9 days before a visit back to Pennsylvania that I’ve had booked and planned for months.

To level-set, he had advanced lung cancer as one gets when they’ve smoked for over 50 years, but he was planning to go to his oncologist appointment later this week to hear about the options, so I wasn’t aware that it was imminent. Although, I guess in life, you never really know. Either way,  I am grateful he lived as long as he did, it’s kind of a miracle in itself.

I’m still in shock, as you can imagine, with so many emotions swirling about that I can hardly stand up straight. I went to the pool and swam for an hour to ensure my limbs still moved and then have been riding the waves ever since, having some good meltdowns between work calls. Yes I’m still working because I’m a contractor and don’t get paid otherwise. I’m also half a country away from my family and he doesn’t want a service, so there isn’t anything I can do to help. My sister already shouldered a lot of the paperwork and decisions; all before I woke up to her missed calls.

So I’m just sitting here, trying to process my feelings and get through the few meetings I have today. My head and heart both ache and I’m pissed that he couldn’t wait 9 fucking days to see me. I believe he tried though, and ultimately, God will get what’s coming to him. I imagine he would spit him back out down to earth if he could. LOL.

My father was a funny contradiction. He was a hippy that loved native americans and also Donald Trump (to my dismay). He was not the dad one would choose, if given any control. He was as stubborn as they come, set in his ways. “I’m old as dirt, sweetheart, it doesn’t matter” would be his retort to me asking him to quit smoking, even after he had to endure the bills of all my childhood years in and out of the hospital, struggling to breathe. He was also drunk, a lot. All of which I’ve reconciled, now in adulthood understanding why he coped the way he did.

I’ve done a lot of work around this, as I always wanted to be a daddy’s girl. Forcing myself into his world by, at around 6 years old, learning to chisel the stone he used to put an addition on our house. Lining the rocks up just right and cementing them in, getting someone to help me lift it wherever it needed to be. He bought me my own tiny trowel. This is probably one of the tenderest moments I can remember about him in my childhood.

He was loud and contrary most of the time, but the man also had a quiet care about him when you were 1-1. He was one of 7 kids, so we have a huge and loud Italian family and I have more cousins than I can count. He would build anything for anyone he loved. A new deck, a remodeled kitchen; whatever it was, in his spare time. Even though he worked for over 30 years as a construction foreman (in the cold, which he also hated and then would come home and sit on our woodstove).

He loved us the way he knew how, working his ass off so we never starved and always had health insurance. We certainly did not live lavishly, but we lived cared for; and props to my mom for handling pretty much everything else in our lives. One of the few times he traveled on a plane, he came to Austin after I bought the house to help fix up some things. He climbed into the attic with no a/c in the dead of summer, it had to have been 120 degrees up there. Frankly we almost killed each other that week, me realizing that he will never understand me – and him angry that I wouldn’t just let him do his thing. As I look back now, I realize how big of a thing it was for him to travel to come help Jeremy and I. He often joked that I have been to more countries than he has states, which is absolutely true.

I wouldn’t trade him for anything,  though. Because if he hadn’t been him; I wouldn’t be who I’ve become. And I think we are both pretty ok with how I turned out, for the most part.

If he wanted a service, I would demand that stairway to heaven and highway to hell be played back to back with a case of Milwaukee’s Best on the way in. I think this would make him smirk. I planned to ask him about this when I saw him, as we were supposed to go straight there from the airport.

I’m not used to being on this side, since I’m usually the one in the midst of it. But as cancer and other health issues are spreading out to people I love, I feel this is the next lesson for me to learn. How to let the fear and grief be there, and process it in a healthy way, knowing I can’t do a damn thing to change any of it for anyone.

And to keep loving as much as possible in this moment.

He once also drove to New York City to visited me when I lived in Brooklyn and we went to see a PBR bull-riding event in Madison square garden. On the way out, someone on the street asked me if we were at a cowboy convention and I laughed so hard. I hope that is what his version of heaven is…one big weird cowboy convention.

I love you daddy, and I’m so sorry I didn’t make it in time to say goodbye.