Washing Brushes

My birthday is tomorrow but I have to admit that ever since my dad died it has actually become a pretty hard day for me. I just can't erase that birthday from three years ago.  It was the last time I ever heard his voice because they took him off the ventilators for a brief period. He looked awful but as the month progressed I realized in retrospect that it was one of his strongest days. I wish I had talked to him more and spent more of that day by his side. I hate hospitals and I was in such shock about everything that was happening that I kept leaving the room to catch my breath. My dad picked up on that and actually kind of snapped at me about getting it together because he needed me to be strong. I needed to hear that and I did pull it together, but I still feel guilty about that. It's all just such a mixed up situation. This whole sandwich generation business. For me it was compressed into a very intense month of vacillating between feeling like a three year and wanting/needing my daddy to scold me and comfort me while also suddenly taking on the impossibly adult role of making horrendous medical decisions, being a support for both of my parents, rubbing my dad's feet, sleeping in shifts, and trying to be available to my children from both a physical and emotional distance. 

It is always so challenging and awkward to know what to say after someone has experienced a loss. Words of sympathy usually sound so trite and empty. Often they are said more to fill that uneasy, quiet space for the one standing outside of the intense grief, the one who is grappling with how to offer comfort. It's never easy to really find right the right words but I have never forgotten the words that one of Adam's colleagues shared with me soon after my father's funeral. I didn't know her very well, but she walked right up to me, looked me straight in the eyes and said: "I know you saw some terrible things during your father's illness, I just want you to know that those images will eventually become dimmer and they will be replaced by the better ones. That's what happened when my dad died after a long illness". She said it with such sincerity, honesty, and clarity that it gave me more hope and comfort than anything else I heard in those hazy weeks right after his death. And they continue to give me comfort because they are turning out to be true. 

I no longer have the same "flashbacks" to what he looked like in those final days and that's a very good thing. I am no where near the weepy mess I was in that first year after his death. I still feel a pinch in my heart when I unexpectedly find a slip of paper with his handwriting on it or a photograph of him but now that is mixed with a smile because I like those surprising reminders. I can now tell my children stories about their grandpa or "gumpa" (that's what Camille used to called him) without becoming teary-eyed and choked up. But I still yearn for his voice. And that's why I was smiling few weeks ago when I was washing out some paintbrushes. Out of nowhere, I could suddenly hear his voice telling me how to do it. Just like he used to do when I was a kid. Just like he used to teach his students. I wish I had recorded some of the big conversations we had over the years, but those are now just fragmented pieces in my memory. It's funny how the words that stay with me so clearly are his instructions on how to clean a brush or how he loved to slap his knee and say "that's the real deal". It turns out it that it really is the small things that matter. Small, unexpected, ordinary, mundane words that now mean so much to me.