Weary

The zeeba and I arrived home today. We flew to Vancouver, and arrived in time to see my father. He passed away about 12 hours after we got to his bedside. The last four days have been hellacious. There is no other word to describe it. I am brokenhearted that I never will get to know this man who helped create me any better than I do right now, in this moment. His illness and premature death have hit me very hard. I have regrets, things I thought I would have time to address, questions I hoped would be answered in that mythical someday that never happens in reality.

Someday is a synonym for never, it seems.

My throat hurts. Literally hurts from the tears I cannot - will not? - shed. I feel like somehow I do not deserve to mourn for a man I stepped away from three years ago. I did not do so to hurt him, I stepped back to keep myself from being hurt. I felt like once again I had been measured and found lacking, that somehow I was not a good enough daughter for him. I did not know him well enough to understand he was proud of me, simply too introverted himself, too much a product of his environment and age to be able to verbally tell me how much I meant to him.

His wife - my step mom - told me she thinks he was waiting for me to arrive before he let go of this world. She was not the only one to say that. My grandma, two of his oldest, closest friends, and my step sister thought so as well. As touched as I am by that, it causes me no small amount of heartache, as I realized far too late that my father loved me, and loved me deeply. He was a man of actions, and I am a woman of words and actions. I need both to truly get some ideas through my head. So in effect, I stepped back (action) from a man who loved me and only had actions to show me how much he cared. I can only imagine that my actions must have hurt him, and that was never my intent.

I hope my final actions, of coming to his bedside, of bringing Amadea to him, make up for that in some small way. I hope he knew, in his final moments, that I loved him deeply.