What I remember of the day after is nothing.
When you have a gap in memory related to a traumatic event in your life, it isn't so much a gap or a chasm; it's not really the "lack of" because, well, you wouldn't know something was missing if it were just missing. It's something else. It's rather a mountain, seen through dense fog, that has the power to trip you up if you even think about scaling it.
The last memory I have of my father's death is late in the afternoon, or maybe it was early the next day, when I asked if I could go out and play.
My mother thought it best for me to stay inside. I remember asking why, and I remember her saying that we were in mourning. Although at that time, I think I heard it as morning. And I remember thinking morning was an odd thing to say, probably because, either, it was afternoon, or it was indeed morning, which, regardless of the earliness or lateness of the hour, would puzzle a five year old who just wanted to go outside.
[[Oh. synapses connected. This happens when I blog. It's why I think blogging is the best new therapy tool going. I wrote above that all I wanted to do was go outside, but I wasn't allowed to. I think of my telecommuting self saying somewhere on this blog that if Web Van still ran, I'd never have a reason to leave the house again, and I think of the times I've stayed inside so long I've wondered if it borders on agoraphobia...]]
Where was I?
Yes, the memory loss/lapse/gap/mountain...
That is where it ends for me.
I don't remember a word that passed between my older brother and I, or my older sister and I, about my father's death that day, that week, that month, that year, or for many years following.
I don't remember a word that passed between my mother and I about my father's death after that morning/mourning for many years following--until the day of her marriage to my step father in fact, when I told her I missed my daddy. I was 12. She told me she did too. And she held me.
I don't remember anything in between, except a couple of out-of-time, out-of-sequence mind videos: me riding the bus pretending to be sad because it got me attention. Me pretending to be sad in front of my favorite teacher so she'd dote on me. It worked. Me wondering why I wasn't sad, just accepting it, understanding at my young age that some things just are.
What were the first words my brother and sister said to me? Where was I? Why didn't I know what my father died from until I was in my late teens? My aunt penny was the person I saw openly grieve. The only one. Maybe that's why we're so close. Maybe she grieved for me.
I know the trip to Illinois is in there somewhere, where my innocence took another, even bigger, hit. I know they tried to protect me from the sadness of the funeral, of the aftermath.
I remember moving before first grade--selling the farm to the Forresters so they could grow mushrooms in the big red barn.
But I don't remember what I felt. I don't remember IF I felt. I wish now that I had been able to feel it then. I'm not sure you can--or that you even need to--at five. It's just not the same when you're that young. Your default is powerlessness. You have no say, no control at that age. When your father dies, you put the catastrophe into the "oh no. okay" basket, where everything that isn't yours to touch goes, and you go outside and play. Or at least you want to.
Because you can't if you're in mourning or if it's morning.
You can't look back and compare then and now 35 years later. That is the frustrating part. And you can't construct the lapses in memory with any accuracy unless you dare to ask for corroboration, validation, from those older than you at the time.
I have never, not to this day, asked my sister or my brother about my father's funeral. I have never asked them if they went. I never asked what they were told, how much they knew before it happened, if they knew he was dying and what that felt like, or what they said to me afterward. Did they come home from school that day? I don't remember.
Where did we all go?
I'm not sure we can say anything now.
I wish I could reconstruct those memories so that I never had to ask them. It's hard for them to talk about. Obviously. It was always hard for us to talk about him. Even now, the word Dad, in reference to my father, doesn't slip off the tongue when I'm talking to my brother or my sister. "That was before Dhhaad died, right?" I stumble. I pause because I want to say, "your dad." I mean, they had him a long time. My sister was 14 when he died. My brother 12. He was their father.
Me? He was still a piece of me. Or I him. I was that young.
I was still being born.
I look at my daughter, now the age I was then.
There are days when it all comes rushing back in surreal mini video clips--all except those pieces that ended up on the cutting room floor. Probably the pieces I need to see the most.
