As I was washing dishes this afternoon I was reminded of some of my old drinking glasses we had growing up. I had in my hand an Ariel glass given to me by my sister as a Christmas gift last year. It made me think about the Disney collectable glasses that McDonald's had quite some time ago, I'm sure you remember the ones I'm talking about.
Then I caught myself wondering about all of our old dishes, and just about everything else we had really. You see, all (well most) of my family's things are still at the house I grew up in even though no one lives there anymore and my mom has yet to sell it. After my dad died my mom, sister, and I all left fairly quickly and on relatively bad terms. Although today I can gladly say that we have since then made up and speak with each other on a regular basis.
Pretty much everything we owned, everything my father spent his whole life working toward is still left behind there, unchanging and frozen like time stands still. He was like the glue holding us all together, and after he passed it all but vanished with him.
We had a normal family dynamic, I guess, however society defines normal nowadays. Like any siblings my sister and I would swear up and down the other was the favorite with reasons we could only justify in our heads, but looking back it was ridiculuous. My sister was--and still is--our mother up one side and down the other, while I heavily favor our dad.
Sometimes it feels like my old life, the one where we're still a family, is on pause and waiting to resume. I wish, I wish, I wish that I could go back and continue, but life froze it completely and forced us to all go our separate ways and start over.
I know I've said this before and I know I'll say it a hundred times more: if giving back everything and everyone would undo my daddy dying, I would do it in a heartbeat. My mom, sister, and I have all grown up and changed a lot in the two and a half years he's been gone, but I would love to have the chance to go back and grow as a family instead of having to do it apart. I guess all of us have to learn some lessons the hard way. As he used to say, "a hard head makes a soft ass."
Willing to give everything up doesn't mean I'm unhappy with where I am now. I'm actually quite happy with how my life has turned out so far, but that doesn't mean I can't wish my daddy was here to experience it with me, with us.
Maybe one day, when I'm older, I'll be able to stop wanting to give everything back and stop trying to bargain for it to have never happened. Maybe then I'll say instead that I wish he was still here to experience all of these things with us. There's so much he's missed out on: his youngest daughter getting married and having his first grandchild, his oldest moving out and getting a place of her own. And there's still so much more he should be here for, but just because he should be doesn't mean he will be. Life has already shown the impossibility behind this, but that won't stop me from wishing.
"Wishing you were somehow here again
Wishing you were somehow near
Sometimes it seemed if I just dreamed
Somehow you would be here"--The Phantom of the Opera, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again
