My dad was always a quiet man. Sure, when he was around a group of people he was always the center of attention making everyone laugh, but if you wanted to know the real him and the stories buried inside, you had to have patience. He spoke rarely about his life, but he had one of the most remarkable stories from start to finish, so when he did open up I listened intently. It was important to me to soak up every ounce of what he was saying, and it wasn’t hard to be captivated by his words.
I don’t even know what constitutes a “miracle” but it’s the best word I can think of to describe how lucky it is that my dad became my dad. Besides fleeing communism, serving in the Hungarian army, working as a long haul Greyhound bus driver, and playing professional soccer, he had his fair share of close calls. I can think of 3 distinct stories where he shouldn’t have survived, but against the odds he did. When he told those particular stories I could see the wrinkles above his brow tense up as he recounted the moments, unsure how he made it out unscathed. Sometimes he would speak about heartbreak and loss, and it always pained me to think about all the grief he had to experience.
I say all of this to make a greater point. What was remarkable about my dad wasn’t just his stories and all the things he survived. What was remarkable about him was his outlook on life as a whole. At the end of every harrowing tale he would look me in the eyes earnestly and say, “It’s okay, I had to go through those things so that you could be born and we could be here. I couldn’t have any other daughter, I had to have you and life had to bring you to me.” He said that every single time, without fail. There was no ‘woah is me’ pity party. It was a matter a fact statement that he had complete peace in. He never wondered why something didn’t turn out differently, because it didn’t matter. It gave him his family, and he loved nothing more in life than us.
The wisdom and calm demeanor my dad held are just 2 of the things I miss terribly every second of every day. I have never seen my dad anxious. Not once. He was my steady anchor to life, and I wish I inherited even an ounce of that from him. It’s amazing to me now looking back how much calm he bestowed on all of our lives. It was like a comfort blanket I wasn’t aware I was wearing until life ripped it clean off. Now I walk around the world feeling overwhelmed by everything, because I can’t go sit down next to my dad to soak up his strength and receive his guidance. The cluster of “what ifs” that flutter around my brain on a daily basis can often make me feel like I’m drowning.
My therapist often reminds me to honor my father by living how he did. She encourages me to take on his outlook on life by realizing every aspect of my life has to happen one specific way to lead me to my “ideal future.” And while that idea sounds poetic in theory, it feels anything but. Why don’t I get a say in what kind of future I have? I would trade my upcoming so called pre-planned ‘future’ for any different variation if it meant my dad would still be here. I don’t believe in destiny, nor fate, and I think they are just whimsical things people say to cope.
As much as I loved my dad’s beautiful belief that ‘what is meant to be will be,’ I disagree with it vehemently. Thinking there is some grand plan being orchestrated to give me a great outcome is such a farce that removes every aspect of free will. Not even “God” himself could convince me that my dad had to die to make my life better. There is no “better,” it’s just surviving day after day, and what I do with it in the mean time could be good, or it could be mediocre, so I’m going to try to make it as bearable as possible and honor my dad that way. But under no circumstances will anything come into my life (that wouldn’t have come otherwise), where I will look back and think “wow, so glad I lost my dad so I could get X,Y,Z!”
And that’s what makes it all the more painful for me to think that my dad DID feel that way about me. His life of pain and loss felt completely worth it, because he loved me and my family so much that he felt like the luckiest man on planet earth to have us no matter what it took to get there. And he would have lost everything all over again if he had to, because that’s how deep his love was. I can’t fathom it, and I can’t understand what that must feel like.
Like much of my grieving process, I find myself staring into two polar opposite doorways with conflicting ideas. On one hand I have my dad and his beautiful view of life that I admire because he is the best man I will ever know. But on the other hand I refuse to believe there is a single thing in this reality worth breaking my heart this deeply for. And I think I might resent any thing who tried to step into that place. Perhaps I just need to accept that my father was a better, more well balanced, and amazing human than I can ever aspire to be. As his offspring I can hope my DNA is infused with an ounce of that greatness, because it’s the best chance I have at finding a semblance of peace in this version of reality now…
-Christina