So Weird He's Funny

Dad's surgery has been very life-changing for me. I've always wondered how I would feel when the inevitable came. What would it be like, standing at his graveside? Would I still feel angry? Would I finally feel safe? Would I regret not having had more time?

I've been consciously working on forgiving him for a while now. Not in the sense of "That's OK, it doesn't matter, everything's hunky-dory again!" but as in letting go of the anger, seeing him as just a person and not the bogie man from my childhood. I wanted to be free of the fear and anger, free of the disappointment.

The night I found out about the bypass I was in shock. It was hours before I started to come out it. When I did, I started crying, just a little; I sat at the computer, staring at somebody's blog, sniffling slightly while a trickle of tears ran down my cheeks.

I married a man who's very good at emotions. He invited me to sit beside him on the couch and snuggle a bit, and then let me sob onto his chest until he was soaked (and not a word of complaint, either.)

Some feeling was growing in my chest, welling up from where I'd buried it decades ago. Every tear gave it further strength and definition, until I could haul it into the light and identify it.

"I only ever wanted him to love me," I sobbed to the husband, and it was like iron bands around my heart broke. I drew a breath and it was like walking out of an overly humid room into a dry and brisk outside day.

That light feeling stayed with me throughout the rest of the night and the next day. I called my dad the next evening and I wasn't afraid or stressed. I actually felt affection for him as we talked, and when he started complaining about the dangers involved his youngest daughter driving across the country to live with me I even laughed.

"I don't like this," he told me, his voice more gruff than usual. "She's going to wind up dead in a ditch, raped, with her throat cut. That car of hers isn't up to the trip. It's going to break down halfway there and she's going to have to fly back home and she'll have to borrow money that she won't be able to pay back because she won't have a job."

Usually I'd have been upset, angry that he has so little faith in the judgment of his children. When I decided to go back to college he told me I wasn't smart enough. The first year of my marriage he would ask me, every time he called, if the husband was beating me yet. He's done that to all of us, and it's hurt and angered every one of us. But right then, hearing his concerns, the illogic suddenly seemed hilariously funny.

I laughed so long and hard I could almost hear him bristling in offense. "Dad," I told him lovingly, "that is so you. You find the worst possible scenario and go right to worrying about that."

He gruffed at me, then went back to discussing all the horrific dangers presented to a young and foolish girl traveling cross-country.

It was the first time I hadn't seen this sort of thing as an attack on us, as just one more spoonful heaped on his pile of reasons stating why we were essentially unlovable.

It's one thing to know with my head that my father loves us, even if he's not capable of showing that in any normal way; it's another thing to convince my heart of that. Somehow, though, his illness broke through that fear and that lonely child inside me finally stopped feeling guilty.

I've been feeling so strange since then. Light and happy, but exhausted too. It's a good feeling, like after just the right workout - pleasantly tired.

Wow. Hitting my fifth decade, and only just now getting to this point. I hope I can keep this outlook. It makes me feel a lot better about the second half of my life to finally be free of that pain.

I think it'll stay away, too.