Two Years Without Daddy

Hey dad.

It’s me. Your son.

I miss you.

I miss you so, so much.

Even though you are dead and gone, I will always be your son, by blood, by creed, and I swear on everything sacred that I will carry our last name, our heritage, and face down the powers of this world, no matter how outnumbered and out-armed I am, and help lead the charge and protect the waning light until the absolute consumes me like it did you…

The only omniscient One that I need on my side is on it, and there is nothing that can stand in my way – not hell, the demons, or the devil himself…

…

And I continue to be strong, daddy…

…in the midst of pain.

…defeat.

…long-suffering.

When life goes ‘not our way’ more than it does ‘our way’, us Herrings hold down the front line so at least one other poor sole survivor can grab onto our battered life boat and journey with us to what I like to call – the bitter end…

…and to those that would rather put even more holes in our lifeboat than we currently have, I have one little but powerful four letter phrase for them – FAFO…

…

And all I do is try, daddy, just like you used to…

…I try, and try, and try, and try some more…

…a fault none to us but to our individual DNA programming instead…

…

You showed me where my true armor is at – now it’s up to me, huh?

…because,

well, because I’m not that little boy anymore, am I, daddy?

…

God almighty, what I would do to be able to…

…

…

But it’s been another year since we’ve done this little charade, huh, daddy?

… and I’m struggling on where I, actually, begin?

…

I wish I knew… you know… but the past year without you has been, well…

…the past two years without you has been, well –

…

…this timeline we’re all on now – it’s – it’s not the right one – but I guess it’ll have to do until we can find our way back to our ‘real’ one…

…

Since I am in the same profession that you grew to love more and more over the forty plus years that you stayed committed to it, I find myself talking to you a lot while I am at work. I bring up old stories from our past days of working together and describe them, in detail, to the doctors and my work friends, because you liked to teach and did not mind having more than enough patience to sit and wait and watch while somebody learned the craft that you were so good at…

…and I begin to miss you even more because of that, as well as many, many other things that made you, you.

….

The world, daddy, has gone mad. Most of the people on this planet do not get it – the jest of living a real, fulfilled life on this Earth; and the ones that do or think they are, even half of them are pretending or following the misdirected mass minority. This planet has become filled with a weirdness that did not used to exist but is here now, the later part of the 1990’s being our peak as a unified society, I believe.

Now, with all these awesome inventions at our disposal, there still feels like there is an open emptiness that exists amongst us. There is no more common sense. People would rather celebrate and idolize idiots and misguided celebrities than true humanitarians. There seems to be full senses of entitlement for everyone who does not deserve it; and when I see the world transforming the way that it is, I, us, the ‘future ghosts’, begin to get jealous of those that have long passed because we no longer want to be here and have to deal with this flawed, scripted way of living.

It almost seems like dying would be easier than living half of the time, daddy, but then your life lessons makes me recognize that the master deceiver is prowling this failed planet like a hungry lion, looking for ‘whoever’ and ‘whatever’ it can devour in the midst of their own confusion…

…

and feasting, it is….

and winning, they are…

…

…for now, at least.

…

Life is tough, daddy, more so for the normal people as compared to any other group out there at the current moment. There is this cause. That cause. This flag to worry about and rally behind. That flag to worry about and promote, one that isn’t even ours but filled with just as much propaganda, instead of worrying about our own Stars and Stripes.

We have this worthless, money grabbing movement. That movement. Everybody pushing their own race, religion, politics, and agenda rather than standing for the common denominating factor I’ve always tried to adhere to – just being normal and special and yourself and respectful, all at once, not stupid and psychotic and narcissistic and abnormal, and by proving your worth by your actions and not by your words or endless social media feeds…

…

And in times when the world gets like this daddy, I miss you even more. I miss talking with you and getting your age old common sense. That 1970’s blue collar common sense. That 1980’s real way of life – type of living. I miss how calm you were. I miss how laid back you were. I miss how unbiased you were. How unconditional your love truly was…

…to be able to lay eyes on you one last time and absorb it how I need to and not how life has forced me to…

…to be able to hug you and take that in and pat you on the shoulder as the roles slowly reversed over our life span…

…

It hurt me so bad to watch you age, daddy, probably just as much as it hurt your heart to see me grow up and struggle through this flawed simulation, this failed creation, we call ‘life’.

…

I just miss you, daddy, because I Iove you. Still do. You were the first man, besides the doctor, that I laid eyes on. You were the greatest father a boy could ever ask for. You were my superhero. My Obi Wan Kenobi. And I never had to put a single poster of some sports star or band or celebrity on the walls of my room because I had the living legend sitting in the living room, watching westerns, snacking until two in the morning, preparing for another day of hard work and being there for his family, regardless of circumstance – hell or high water or an unequal combination of both.

…

And I’m trying, daddy.

I really am…

Your entire family is.

…

And my God, daddy, you would be so proud.

…

Your bravery lives on…

The waning light continues to waver inside each one of us…

We carry the fire… …still…

…

Others can forget and move on and that’s okay because it is their life to live and I do not have to answer for them and I want them to have actual Freedom, if that is the jest of their main argument – but daddy,

one of my main goals in life is to not let you die in vain.

…

In my experience, my timeline is not going to be straight and narrow. No, no, no. My path has curves. Alleyways. City streets. Country backroads. Forks in the road. Four way stops in the middle of nowhere. I’m going to have to pass a lot of people, sometimes on a double yellow, sometimes not, in the greatest truck ever invented. This path is mine and mine alone, me adopting this circumstantial adage a long time ago –

instead of figuring out life, I’m going to let life figure out me.

…

I miss my relationship with my oldest son, daddy, minus a few (well – maybe a lot) of details that are attached along with that. I lost this piece of me the same year I lost you, at no fault to me if the honest facts of malfeasance were laid out, and it was not easy… …

…still is not…

But guess what?

By God’s mercy and good graces, I still breathe and type and live and love and laugh and forgive and move on and heal and get hurt some more and love even harder and then still get angry when someone out ‘there’ acts ‘stupid’ and then I remember why I’m here in the first place because forgiveness over time is better than no forgiveness at all…

…because a life without personal conviction – I guess we can see what kind of gaslighting, narcissistic world that can be to live in because we’re living in it now and the people who think they are beyond that simple, intangible element… …true, honest, unadulterated conviction…

…realizing you are not always right and that you make mistakes too…

…

Because, daddy, you have taught me two important lessons over the past two years – two things you revealed to me – intangibles that nobody, I SAY NOBODY, can escape : karma and God’s true balance.

…

But I keep pushing forward, daddy…

…just as you taught me…

…

…

I will not let you die in vain…

…

…

My youngest son, daddy, I show him pictures and videos of you because I want him to remember. For some reason, I need him to remember.

He will never know how great of a man you are and were, unlike my oldest, and that doesn’t unnerve me, but it does do one thing – it puts everything into full perspective. It reminds me of what is truly important in this life. It keeps me in my lane, even in the moments when I should get out of it and lay waste to whatever negativeness inserted itself into my peaceful timeline.

And the funny thing is, daddy, whenever I show him pictures and videos of you two, it takes him a second, but he remembers and lights up and looks at me and says,

“that’s grandaddy…”

…

and I refuse to let their narrative be the script I live by…

and I refuse to let their stupidity outweigh my ‘common sense normalcy’…

and I refuse to let them take the ‘natural world’ and make it ‘unnatural’, just so it can better fit their desires…

…

you will not die in vain, daddy…

…

I will not let it happen…

I just can’t…

…

And then, the biggest gift you could ever receive in the afterlife as, I believe, you check in on your children and your family from time to time – me and your ‘babygirl’, your daughter, my sister, are back working together after a ten year plus hiatus from our days working together at the old family dental lab. We picked up where we left off, Shaking ‘n Baking doing their thing and doing it almost flawlessly. It was as if time was letting the both of us get over ourselves before merging this certain branch so we could continue to watch after one another like we have tried to do our entire life…

….

Yes, daddy – she still feels the need to micromanage everything, even when some of my ‘sometimes’ foolproof, ‘sometimes’ not, methods are already in place – I still let her because that is what you would do.

Yes, daddy – she still hates bending wire and putting post damns in relines, so when those trickle by our desks and I hear her inner soul scream that she does not want to do it – I do those for her like you used to.

Yes, daddy – she hates to hear me sing along to songs and do musical sound effects, just as much as I used to hate hearing you whistle to whatever track tickled your ears just right, so I just hum an internal tune that even the angels up above could not hear, knowing that I would do anything in the world to be able to hear you serenade the air again.

Yes, daddy – she still has everything you taught her and has multiplied it a thousand fold. She’s one of the hardest workers that ever existed on this planet, a great technician and asset to any dental office, and, as irony would have it, we even ride to work together every once in a while, taking us back to the times when you were alive and the family business was booming.

She’s a special girl, but something already let’s me know that you knew that already – fishing trips when she was younger, meeting all of her boyfriends, watching her give you two beautiful grandchildren and then receiving two great grandchildren in the process – her inner spirit being just as strong and stubborn as ours – I know you are in heaven, smiling down on all of us because I can feel it when the moment is right…

…but one must be paying attention when this occurrence takes place or it will pass you by…

…

And we all miss you so, so much daddy…

…

and I refuse to let you die in vain…

…

Momma still misses you, and all your pictures of old remind her of how special you two’s relationship was, even if some things got lost along the way or were forgotten as you both slowly became older and a little slower. We continue to watch after her because she is all we have left, and she is still a split flame fireball going eighty miles an hour everywhere, with a good group of friends that are worth their weight in solid gold bars.

Yes, some things she does still gets on our nerves just as they would yours, but all of us expect it in our own way, and we damn sure do not take any of it for granted considering she is so full of love and the time is drawing near for all of us.

When we cook a big meal or when the holidays or certain birthdays come around, I’ll say out loud, ‘dad would be jealous right now’, and we try to keep you alive in those moments for as long as we can, especially when someone brings up a past story about you from inside their shirt sleeve like an infamous Ace of Spades.

…

…and it still seems unnatural talking about you in the past tense, but what else do we have to cling to in the ‘now’?

…

And then, just as it was yesterday, the moment and all its emotions begin to trickle throughout my body…

…

I still remember watching you die on that hospital bed.

I still remember what you looked like – void of everything that made you – you.

I still remember the sound of your last breath.

I still remember how the room felt after your soul had evacuated into the everlasting.

I still remember momma kissing your forehead and grabbing your big toe with her hand on the way out and thanking you for the best fifty years of her life before leaving the room for the last time.

I still remember opening your eyes, just to look at them one last time, because I really wanted the doctors and monitors to be wrong – but, they, were, not…

I sat there for thirty minutes afterwards and looked at you and talked out loud to you and told you that I loved you with no response and hung out with you and watched an episode of The Deadliest Catch with you because… well… you were my daddy…

…my hero…

…and when Superman dies, the world stops for a second…

…

…for some of us, at least,

…

…and it broke my heart to know that I had to leave you behind so they could turn your body to ash,

and I know, in that moment, when death faced you down, you faced it back – scarred body and all – with your scuba diving symbol tattoo on your shoulder – and then the light consumed you and took you back home where you belong – where some of us here on Earth belong and are working our way there – and, even though it broke your heart to have to leave us behind, I bet that light was so warm and bright and comforting and full of life force energy and it consumed you and turned you into something that all of us stuck here on Earth constantly chase on a daily basis –

… the ability and time to finally become – infinite…

…

… and to finally be able to rest,

…dear Jesus – just a little rest …

…

yet, daddy, I still promise – I will not let you die in vain.

…

I will chase my dreams, regardless of result. I will love my wife and try to supply for her like you did for mom. I will try my best to remain ‘normal’ while still being who I was always destined to be. I will love both of my sons, one from a distance – one from up close, and know that ‘that’ day of welcomeness and forgiveness will come ‘naturally’ in the future, like it should have been all along, and certain ‘variables’ and ‘nonsense’ can be side stepped, avoided, and put to the side.

I will love myself like you would have wanted me to. I will still try to tag team each work day, be patient and kind and love my sister, not like you would do as a father but as a brother who has pieces of the father inside of himself. I do this for her, as I do for the rest of the family…

…the granddaughter that misses your conversations and smile and laugh and just being able to be near you and your mannerisms….

…the grandson, much less grandsons, who misses all the teaching moments, legends of old, fishing and hunting trips, and endless delicious meals that can be cooked on the grill…

…the daughter that misses everything that makes her daddy – her daddy…

…the wife that misses her once strong rock, who vowed for better or worse, richer or poorer, till death…

…me, the son, missing his superhero to swoop in and save the day, yet again…

…

…

I refuse to let you die in vain, daddy – now, today, forever.

…

…

And I still have not forgotten all the things that made you special, nor will I ever.

Because I love you, daddy, now – more than ever!

…

and,

well –

I guess we will just have to save the rest for another time, won’t we?

…

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VNV Nation – Nova

“Lay me down, and wash this world from me,
Open the skies, and burn it all away,
‘Cause I’ve been waiting, all my life,
Forever waiting, shine your light on me”

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Hey Daddy…

…you know where you can visit me if you need to…

…

Keep our seat at the table ready because we are trying…

…that we are…

…

And what a day that will be!