Dearest Lexi
I've been writing this note since you told me Dave was sick.
There are ideas tacked all over the fridge. You don't spend your entire life being an English teacher without a firm belief in rough drafts. I had diagrammed every sentence in this letter until finally I gave up and just started writing what you have in your hands. If I misuse a semi-colon, mea culpa.
I meant to give this to you after the funeral last weekend, but as soon as all the guests had left and I finished doing the dishes, you were passed out upstairs on the bed. Of course, I didn't blame you. When your father died I slept for three weeks straight, waking only to eat, cry, and watch All My Children. To this day, the site of Susan Lucci makes me teary-eyed.
It's a ridiculous cliche, but it's true. Sleeping is what you do when bad things happen. Some of us just overdo it.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what it must have been like for you during that time. I'm sure sleeping wasn't the only thing I overdid. In fact, I'm sure of it.
Dave was a good man. He was so good that I often felt embarrassed around him. I have that habit around truly good people, as you know. I am a redeemed person, but there's a big difference. I can never be as good as you and Dave and the girls are.
Most of the things in this letter you will already know, and some you may not. Take what you will and leave the rest on the paper.
Make your girls breakfast everyday. Let them see you start each day with a clear and distinct action. Breakfast is the most comforting meal of the day, especially if you make them Mickey Mouse pancakes. It's hard to have a truly awful day when you start it with Mickey Mouse pancakes. I know your grandmother made you breakfast for a few weeks after Daddy died when she was staying with us. That was my job, and I should have been doing it rather than lying comatose in the bed upstairs. This is one of the things you already know, but I'll say it anyway--
Grieving that long is a luxury for those who don't have children.
Psychologists may argue, but believe me, it's true.
Don't do away with Dave. Keep his photos. I rid the house of your father a few days after his passing. I couldn't stand to look at him, because every time I did I could feel a sob scratching its way up my esophagus wanting to explode out of my body. I should have shoved that sob down and kept right on looking at those photos. I owed you whatever I could give you of your father, no matter how painful it might have been for me.
When the girls ask about Dave, be blunt. I danced around the subject too often. I told you that your father was 'away,' 'not here,' 'in Heaven,' 'resting,' and 'at peace.' I told you so many things you probably thought your father had become God--being anywhere and everywhere. I walked by your room once and saw you looking out the window with the same expectant stare a dog has waiting for its owner to pull into the driveway. I knew who you were waiting for, and allowing you to do that for even a second was very cruel of me. I didn't stop you because I think a part of me was waiting too.
Laugh once a day. I don't care how hard it is. Laugh and let Maddy and Elizabeth see you laugh. Put on a clown nose if you have to. I remember your grandmother coming into my room during the bed-ridden phase and doing a tap routine that looked so ridiculous I couldn't help but guffaw. I instantly felt guilty and started to cry, which made your grandmother livid.
She said--'Being miserable is understandable, but choosing misery when your entire being is begging for something else is unnecessary and silly.'
She was right.
Develop a bad habit that won't kill your organs or your relationship with your children. I took up nail-biting. My mother used to scold me for it, but I was fairly certain it was that or heavy drug use, and when I told her so, she shut up pretty fast. Become O.C.D., hit light switches three times when you shut them off, clean compulsively, do whatever you want. Don't let people tell you that you can get through this without distractions. Distractions are a saving grace.
Do everything in your own time. I went out on a date a year after Paul's death, because everybody told me I simply HAD to. So I went out with this awful man with bad breath and an overly conservative view of life and when I got home I actually felt suicidal. I thought that your father might have been the last decent man on the planet and that the rest were all going to be Republicans who smelled like garlic bread even when they weren't eating it. Of course, that's not the case, but what I realized was that until you're ready to move on, if you're ever ready, every man is going to seem like that man I went out on a date with--some just more horrific than others.
Don't make Dave a saint. He was a good father and a good husband, and in some ways, that's harder than being a saint. The girls are going to have a hard enough time not comparing every man they meet to their father. If you make him the love child of Mother Theresa and Superman, it'll be downright impossible.
Finally, my little girl, take your girls out places. Let them see that the world may be a little sadder without their father in it, but it is also a place that can welcome them into its arms if they let it. I never took you anywhere because I was scared of losing you like I lost your father. I kept us crammed into that house for far too long. I was so angry with everything and everyone. I thought I could blackmail the universe. I thought, maybe if I starve the world of me then it'll come knocking on the door and hand me my husband back.
That's not how it is, unfortunately.
You're so much stronger than I was, Lexi. I see you walking with the girls--one on each side of you--and I wonder how you turned out to be such a wonderful mother with such a lousy example of one to reflect on. Trust in that strength, and when you don't think you have it, call me and I'll come over and make you those Mickey Mouse pancakes.
It occurred to me that when I met your father, we almost didn't. We were both in a bookstore and we passed each other, and something about him made me turn around and say 'Hello.' To think I could have only gotten seconds with that man, and instead I got half a lifetime. I think of that when I get angry and feel cheated. I think of that, and somehow, I'm grateful to fate for allowing me to voice that 'Hello.'
What gave you Dave isn't the same thing that took him away. The former is so much stronger and more powerful than the latter. And even though it can never give you him again, it can give you what you need to heal, and maybe something after that.
I love you,
Mom
No comments:
Post a Comment