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today is the first father’s day without my father.
earlier this week, everyone kept asking me how i was doing and i kept saying “fine” and i kept meaning it because that is how i felt when they asked me. but now, on this day, the first father’s day without my father, i am struggling. maybe it was having the garage sale yesterday, and watching as crowds of people tried on his clothes, thumbing through the racks of his favorite guitar shirts and shoving their impersonal arms in the sleeves and asking what kind of deal they could have if they bought more than one. this is what’s left after death – strangers wanting deals on a few shirts.
i keep thinking about what we were doing last year on this day, when we picked up mendocino farms and made some mimosas and took dad out on our family boat on the westlake lake. it wasn’t a perfect memory, but it ended up being a nice day despite the fact that he said he wanted to cancel father’s day celebrations due to a “culmination of world and local events affecting [his] outlook.” he was a funny man, that dad. not perfect, sometimes infuriating, but mine. ours.
i woke up with a nosebleed, one of many weird genetic traits he passed on to me, along with a certain degree of translucent irish paleness, his “old” nose (before he broke it) and the signature small carroll mouth, and i can’t help thinking it’s his way of joking around up there on this “bogus media holiday.” i know a part of him wishes he could still be here too, celebrating with a BBQ and a dip with our dog penny in the pool. he loved watching her swim, like he used to love swimming with us as kids, tossing us up in the air over and over and over again. it was always the same – us 5 kids had been in pool for hours while he napped in the hammock, and then all of a sudden, he would jump up and do a sneaky dad dive into the pool while we shrieked and swam after him, trying to catch him and hang on his back. my mom would make nachos and we’d come out of the pool still dripping water as we devoured them.
i just made some tea. i’m listening to classic rock. we used to call this dishes music, because he would always put it on while he did the dishes, before any of us were old enough to help. mom cooked. we danced around in the kitchen to queen and led zepplin and extreme and yes and the who while dad scrubbed plates and hummed along with the bassline. he never sang, he always hummed the basslines. he played us peter frampton tapes in the car, and we kept asking him to rewind the “the wah wah wah voicebox song”(show me the way) so we could hear it again. god, we loved that damn voicebox.
i’m not going to lie, this first father’s day is rough, rougher than i anticipated. and his birthday is next sunday, so we’ll have a double whammy to get through. and then 4th of july, and the list goes on of “firsts” we’ll have to walk through without him. i’m not sure when this pain will go away, or if it ever does or just gets easier to accept as the months and years go by. i know it’s different for everyone. but i’m trying to celebrate the best way i know how, and the best way that i can, on this day today. led zepplin is singing about a whole lotta love and i feel that.
happy father’s day, dad. i love you.
