Ten Years

I was in Target trying to do some Christmas shopping a few days ago when this man appeared. 

The first time I saw him, he was asking a sales associate for a video game. The associate pointed out there is a newer game that had just come out (I think assuming if the request for the first game had been made, the recipient might also be happy to get the second) and the man looked, then somewhat gruffly declined, saying he’d better stick to what the text said.

The next time I saw him, he was on his phone. He wasn’t so loud as to be rude, but he was loud enough that it was obvious he simply didn’t care that others could hear him. He was talking to someone about that person’s recent trip to Chicago and kept asking if they had done certain things. “Did you have lunch in the Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s?”

As I listened to him, it began to dawn on me that this could have been my dad. Buying gifts his grandchildren sent text requests for, talking to me on the phone as he walked through a store. Slowly, I felt a familiar panic start to creep in. An urge to run out of the store washed over me, but a few deep breaths did the trick as I mentally talked myself down. “Focus. Christmas shopping. It will be ok.”

Today marks ten years since he died. It feels like a special milestone, like there should be something extra special to mark the occasion this year. After all, ten years is an ENTIRE DECADE. It's almost 1/4 of my lifetime. I feel as if I should have extra special words to share this year, something worthy of the occasion. But I don’t.

Really, today feels a lot like yesterday. Tomorrow, I suspect, will feel much like today. The truth is, the milestone I’ve reached is possibly just one where today feels less obtrusive than in years past. Yes, I’ve felt the familiar dread seeping in but it started later and was less intense than in the past. 

This morning as I woke and remembered what day it was, the word “metamorphosis” popped into my head.

I know what it means, but for the sake of exploring further why it might have come to me, I looked up the definition. 

“A change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one…”

Often, we analogize between death and metamorphosis, particularly if we are of the Christian faith, and we tend to associate it mostly with the person who has died.

But truthfully, those who are still living will go through a metamorphosis too. 

I look around me some days and think about how this life I have now is one my dad wouldn’t recognize. If he somehow came back today, he would see how everything has changed. I have another child. Our house has different furniture. I am a college professor. I finally applied to graduate school.

Our children are ten years older. Ainsley is now a year older than Ethan was when he died. He has four grandchildren who did not get to know him here.

Our city has roads and buildings that didn’t exist when he was here. Even the last house he lived in looks different, having withstood a tornado.

A big part of grieving is that you keep on moving and creating your life and eventually the void you have feels less significant. It’s still there, but you grow accustomed to it. It’s not able to sting as often as it used to because you continue to build a cushion around it. Most days, I can say the words “when my dad died” without skipping a beat. The ache still comes at unexpected times, but much less frequently. 

As I lay in bed reflecting on that word - metamorphosis- today, I wondered- how much of the life I have now would have happened even if he had lived? How much of it has only happened because he died? What if some of the most wonderful things that have happened in the past ten years were only able to be so because his death steered me toward that path? 

Does the caterpillar know what lies on the other side of the cocoon?

I don’t know who the man in Target was buying the video game for, or who he was talking to on the phone. I don’t know what about him exactly triggered a reaction in me except that it was another reminder - not of the things I miss about my dad, but of the things we’re missing out on sharing with him. The next few months will be filled to the brim with milestones he is missing. How I wish he was here to congratulate Ethan on his college acceptances and watch him graduate, to teach Elisabeth how to drive, and to see Aidan start high school. And oh, how he would laugh at Ainsley, considering her the perfect retribution for my own childhood.

I suspect that like the man in Target, my dad would have enjoyed Christmas shopping in his retirement, using lists texted to him by the kids. But ten years ago, we had a different arrangement. My dad used to have me buy the kids’ Christmas gifts for him. He knew it was a gift for everyone- the kids got fun stuff, I got to shop more, (it was fun when they were little) and he didn’t have to mess with it. He really was the consummate deal maker.

When he was hospitalized, I was still valiantly doing his shopping - at first. I had only bought one thing, a sweater set for Elisabeth. I remembered it a few weeks after he died. I never got to wrap it but eventually I did put it in her closet. It’s still here in the house today. It doesn’t even fit Ainsley anymore, but I can’t bear to get rid of it. Sometimes, part of grieving is just learning what to hold on to, and what to let go. It’s a process. A leap of faith, if you will. 

A metamorphosis.