I’ve always been a heart-sleeving fool and as such, my arrogance had me convinced that I knew the poignant touch of loss. Rollercoaster romances, countless-compartmentalized-occasionally-conjugal-caretakers and endless unrequited obsessions all kept my heart pretty busy with misery… Fuckin’ bitches. (Sorry, Sister. She beat me to believe that you never call a woman that word. I shall self-flagellate later in penance.) There was joy, too, don’t mistake me. Oh boy, was there some joy! I have loved some wonderful women, and many more amazing ones have loved me. Certainly more than I deserve, but no more than I desire. Okay, so maybe Papa was a rolling stone. What of it?! I recognize that I have a vast pool of emotional needs. A romantic flaw made fatal when crossed with the uncompromising personality of a high-functioning sociopath. C’est la vie. If I didn’t love myself so damn much, this ability to self-reflect would really make me hate me. It amazes me daily that those closest to me who have seen these things that impede me can still find reasons to call on me in spite of the very real possibility that I will never change. Hat’s off to you fools. I love you! May you never leave me!
But that’s just it, isn’t it. Everything that has a beginning, has an end. To bring it way back around: I thought I knew the poignant touch of loss from and through romance and love, respectively. Then my parents died, one at a time, and a few years apart. My Granny died a few years before my mom, and that loss was devastating, to be sure, but through a series of unfortunate events, I was blessed to have my final meeting and memory of my Granny be the best and most perfect storybook goodbye in our history. So when I received the news of her passing a few months later, I immediately and already felt like I had closure. Closure is the key to managing loss. It eliminates the emptiness of regret that embodies a loved one’s absence from your life but until you get it, it’s really just a useless stone weighing on your brain. As to what form that stone takes, that is anyone’s guess. In romance you can use it to break the lock on a new door and leave the old one behind, half-cocked off the hinges from kickin the shit out of it. It doesn’t matter cuz you’ll probably come back and torch the bitch anyway if this next house is better. But how do you get closure from a home that you want to curate as a historical monument such as the death of a loved one or the absence of a defining friendship?
One thing I always wanted when my parents were alive is for them to have a relationship with their grandchild, whom they adored and loved in spite of all the chaos from whence she came. In the back of my grief, I hoped that I might be provided some measure of closure after I had formed a new relationship with my daughter. Unfortunately, that transference of emotion only works with romance. As our relationship grows and the love for my daughter deepens, so too does the longing for my parents’ witticisms and “wisdom”. Of course, life goes on and I am well on with my pursuit of happiness as a single, witless, friendless father. I’ve buried my regrets–some alive, but most of them dead. I laugh inside as the enlightenment of fatherhood falls fondly over my childhood memories. I feel my parents’ love all over again through the love I pass on to my daughter. But no matter how hard I love my kid or myself, no matter how far behind my old home becomes, regardless of how many new experiences replace the forgotten memories, there exists a hole in my feelings, a gap in my emotions, a petrified pump on my heart that will never work again. I carry the stone because the only closure I know would be to cast it and I refuse to do that unless I can guarantee at least 12 skips. It’s still too heavy for that. Perhaps with another few years of emotional erosion…