missing – Freeing Kate

On the 24th, she turned 68 and it came and went quietly. Every year comes with the question– will this one be the last? It’s been about 10 years now since it became so absolutely apparent that something was wrong, and for women diagnosed with dementia around the age of 60, the average lifespan is an additional 8.9 years.

I so often wonder what she would think if she could see me today. I have no real good reason for it given our past and the damage done but that doesn’t matter. I will always wonder what she would think. It comes up most on the typical days– her birthday and Mother’s Day. On Mother’s Day I do have a new focus on how does my son see me? It’s a nice shift but that old question is still burried somewhere underneath.

For years, everyone told me I looked like her and for some time, I hated it. I now embrace it and share it with others. I do carry her in some small way with me, always. In that way, she is still here and always will be.

“I am tied by truth like an anchor
Anchored to a bottomless sea
I am floating freely in the heavens
Held in by your heart’s gravity

All because of love
All because of love
Even though sometimes you don’t know who I am

I am you, everything you do
Anything you say, you want me to be
You and me are charms on a chain
Linked eternally in what we can’t undo
And I am you”

When I was 20, I used to walk to work every day. My dad worked construction, and every day I would walk by his work site on my way to work and if I didn’t see him, I’d spot his car. Somehow it was comforting. I was walking from my first apartment to my new job, saving up for my first car. I was on my own, I was safe, and walking by that site every day only added to the familiarity and the first feeling of home in many years. I needed that, I needed him.

This year, I turned 29. I didn’t hear much from my dad but I think that I am realizing that it is alright. This past year has been one of growth in a lot of ways. Growing up, my dad really wasn’t there for me in a lot of ways but I grew up to understand him and all that he couldn’t really give. That year that I was 20 was the year that he turned up on my doorstep. We started to get coffee.. A lot. We talked about my hopes, my dreams, my fears.. good days and bad days. He listened through it all. Some days, he still let me down but that was alright, he was giving me something that he’d never given before. He was listening.

I haven’t seen much of my dad this year. I miss him. This last visit with him he talked a lot about politics and baseball. He didn’t ask very many questions and I realized then what he had clearly already come to understand—that I don’t need him anymore—not in the way that I used to. Through everything, I have been alright and there are others who need him more. He said it during one of our phone conversations last year, “I always knew that I would never have to worry about you.” And maybe, that is enough. To know that for the man who has given everything of himself to everyone around him, I have never given a single sleepless night.

Tag: missing

68

Maybe it’s enough.