Missing Dad....

I've been missing dad lately.....I know he's been gone nearly 21 years now...Wow, hard to believe so much time has passed....But sometimes I just miss him so much and wonder how I ever survived losing him. Yes, I miss mom too, and Aunt Tata and Grandma and Grandpa....but Dad is special...he was mine, you know? All mine. Mom was my mother, but she didn't give birth to me so we had a bond, but it wasn't what is normally between a mother and child. I love her and still miss her...regret terribly how I treated her, although I understand now that my behavior was completely normal for what I had been through. But dad...he was mine, and God saw fit to take him away from me when I was only ten...maybe losing him so young is one reason why I'm still hanging on, I don't know.

UB told me the other day about the day Dad realized he had cancer. I'd never heard this story before, and it didn't bother me at first but crept into my mind two days ago (the day after hearing it) at work and I about lost it. Apparently, Dad went to UB at work while they were waiting to go to a meeting and told him he was urinating blood, and he said he knew what that meant. That must've been the same day Aunt Tata picked me up from Brownies and the whole family was at the house when we got there. I would imagine it was either the same day or very soon after...I never knew that UB was the first person he told, or that he realized this at work or knew right away what it meant. He said they both knew it wasn't good news, but had no idea it was so bad.

So I was at work the next day and it crept into my mind and I had to fight to hold it together. I was sad and withdrawn and didn't talk or laugh much, and it's possible people noticed but if they did, they didn't say much to me. I barely made it to my second break, but when it came, I went to the bathroom and cried....I got a text message from Sean that said he was coming over that night (it was a Tuesday), so I replied saying I needed him and was missing dad. Splashed cold water on my face and tried to appear normal when I went back to work, and it must've worked because no one seemed to notice that my nose was a little red.

Made it through the rest of work OK...maybe just knowing he was waiting for me and would be here to console me as always helped, I don't know. But I made it through it without thinking too much about it and left at midnight. He was asleep when I got home, but was here for me when I started to cry again. Didn't get much sleep that night, and I remember him holding me as I sobbed myself to sleep. Was of course drained the next day, but I made it through OK.

He's always so wonderful to me...he doesn't know what it's like to lose a parent, especially as a child, so I know he has no idea what I've been through, but he's always here to lend a shoulder when I need to cry. Actually, no one in my life understands. Russ hated his father and was actually a little happy when he died; Missy has never lost a parent, although hers are divorced and remarried and she sometimes feels her father is gone because he lives so far away and has a new life....no one gets it but UB, because he's been there the entire way and has watched what losing my family has done to me...he's helped me through most of their deaths...he looked after me when Dad died, held my hand at my mom's funeral, was the one to tell me Grandma had passed during the night, and of course we helped each other through Aunt Tata's death last year. So I suppose if anyone truly understands, it would be him.

To follow this train of thought a little further, perhaps that is why I keep him around after all he's done to me...maybe it's a combination of having someone in my life who truly understands what I've been through, and having any semblance of family. I have to watch, though, that I don't get so caught up in having family that I lose myself or let myself get hurt...I know all too well how easily he can go from best friend to asshole. I thought losing his wife would end all of that and would make him a better person, but it didn't even stop after she died....I don't know, that's probably fodder for another journal entry.