My First, Most Painful Breakup
How my father's dramatic death has impacted every relationship since.
Hey,
I am having a surprising…and intense reaction to my dating letters from the last two weeks. I wrote about how much I love boys. (True.) That I’m still friends with every guy I’ve ever dated. (Also, true.) And so, yes, while I’m sort of an A++ flirt and date, writing those letters also brought me face to face with the other side of the coin which is my deepest challenge: I have never broken up with anyone significant in my life. Never. I. Literally. Can. Not. Even when it’s obvious. Even when I’m miserable. I will sit with the hard feelings and turn it into a spiritual thing. (How can these feelings soften me? What is this situation here to teach me?) I can hear my best friend David saying something along the lines of, “It’s telling you to get the fuck out!!” But in all seriousness, he and I have been sitting with this question for the past two years: Why did I stay so long in my marriage? 26 years. And not just my marriage. Post- and Pre-marriage relationships. Even though it wasn’t working for me, it didn’t end until the other person finally called it. I kept looking at the self-worth angle but honestly? It doesn’t resonate. I’ve worked so hard on that. But just the other day, as David and I were on one of our epic Central Park walks talking ad nauseum about this topic, I suddenly (and quite literally) doubled over with a realization. I finally understood why each goodbye filled me with despair.
But first, a trip back to when I was 16-years old.
My parents had both gone out of the country and left me with… my perpetrator. So rather than dodging him round the clock, I went out every night with older friends and didn’t come home until he (and my disabled sister) were asleep. During those two weeks, I started hanging out with a 20-year-old drummer from a local rock band. He saw someone cool and sexy in me. And during those two weeks, I started becoming that cool and sexy girl – the way I dressed, my makeup, staying out late. But all those late nights and early mornings took a toll physically. I developed a nasty cough…and by the time my parents came back, I was really quite sick.
I was hospitalized within a few days of their return with a serious form of Pneumonia. A day or so later, my dad was hospitalized with similar symptoms. We were in the same hospital, on the same floor. I was in Pediatrics; he was in Cardiology. They didn’t tell me that he was in a coma that whole week I was hospitalized. But the day I was released, he came out of it. My mother took me by his room to say hi on my way out. I was really taken aback by all the machines he was hooked up to. I remember his eyes tracking me, but I barely stepped into the room. I really wanted to get out of there. I just mumbled, “Bye” and left. I was kinda used to my dad being sick throughout my childhood, but there was something so strong about him. Even though he kept getting sick, he would always get better.
He died on my car ride home from the hospital.
When we walked into my house, the phone was ringing. I think it was my brother who drove me home. I could hear him talking on the phone and based on his end of the conversation, it was clear my dad had died. Someone was calling with condolences. No one ever specifically told me that he died. (Today, there are so many books to help kids cope with the loss of a pet much the less a parent!) But of course, it was obvious. My mom was a wreck. Arrangements were being made. I was used to putting two and two together. I did not process his death. How could I have? Not one person talked about it to me. I remember laughing with my friends at his funeral about nothing of importance. (I could tell they were uncomfortable with my jokey vibe.) I was not in my body. I just remember feeling the sunny, beautiful June day and thinking this does not seem like the right weather for burying your father, as though I was directing a scene.
When I consider my inability to say goodbye to significant men in my life it’s connected to my father’s untimely and surprising death. The death I feared I had caused because it was so closely linked to my illness. I lived. He died. I came out of his death as a star in some ways. A star of my own production. For his funeral, I had put together an epic, sexy, almost-dystopian outfit Rihanna could have worn – Black skin-tight long sleeve crop top with strong shoulder pads (Rick Owens before Rick Owens) and matching cropped leggings. Heavy black eyeliner. My brother sent me back upstairs to change. This isn’t appropriate for your father’s funeral, he said. Neither of us knew I was preparing for a role I would play for much of my adulthood. From that moment on, I would embark on the challenge of seducing every man I was interested in. This challenge of never again letting love die….even when it’s dead. Holding tight onto it. Sleeping next to love’s corpse. It’s not dead. It’s not dead. He’s not dead.
I realize today that I need to let my dad go…to finally grieve that loss.
This grief is complicated because I regret the kind of daughter I was to him. Since my parents were always in major conflict with each other, I didn’t learn fidelity. I completely took my father for granted. He took me to school every day. He picked me up every day. Every day after school he would take me to the variety store in town and buy me a gift. Every. Single. Day. And always with a big smile and a joke. My favorite after school gift was my Big Bird talking alarm clock (“Wake up! It’s me, Big Bird! One foot out! Now the other!”).
I did love this man, but I struggled with loving him outwardly because my mother appeared to hate him so much. She was always so disappointed with him. Always critical. Always fighting. It felt like loving him would be a betrayal to her: My hard-working mother. So, I always acted like I just tolerated him and he accepted those scraps of love. How I wish I could have thanked him on his death bed. Really thanked him for his consistency…his good humor…his generosity. One way I honor him today is by always speaking well of my children’s father to them even though we’re going through a divorce.
My father was a complicated man for a child to embrace for superficial reasons, too. He was an old man (if he were alive today, he would be 102!). His hygiene wasn’t great. He wore dentures. Seeing them soaking every day in our one functioning bathroom had a yuck factor. He wasn’t particularly neat, his clothing often stained. He was always smoking. And reading. He was always reading and writing. Writing. Writing. Writing. What was he writing? What was he always fucking writing?
This reminds me of how my ex-husband recently said that my writing is a hobby, not a job. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, but it actually reminded me of my father and the passion and fervor with which he, too, was writing every day. Writing as though his life depended on it. I feel the same. Was it his hobby, too? Is it still a hobby when you’re doing something from your soul? I received the gift of my “hobby” from my dad: My commitment to seeking truth over making a living. Communicating because my life depends on it and not because I want to my life to depend on it. This made me feel more like my father’s daughter.
My father has been guiding my life for so long, in so many good ways…and in trauma. The trauma of his death. The goodbye I was deprived of, by my own doing. My own understandable immaturity at age 16, to not know when I walked away from his hospital bed that I was giving up my chance to say to my last goodbye. And my subsequent inability for the rest of my life to say goodbye to every man I have had the privilege to cross paths with. Whom I have loved with reckless abandon because I didn’t have the chance to love my father that way.
And how do I learn to say goodbye once and for all? The healing goodbye. Do I say it in ritual to my late father? To my husband? To my boyfriend? To the many ex-boyfriends I remain friends with? To the “perfect” family life I thought I had totally figured out? Who or what am I supposed to practice loss with? My beauty? My youth? My 89-year-old mother? The seasons? Time? All of it, I think. Every moment is a goodbye. A shedding of our old skin and an introduction to the new. My best friend, David, is a hospice chaplain. Coincidence? He has gently guided me to the most important practice of my life: Letting go. Grieving. Reorganizing in what the new season brings with a new version of me alongside it.
Thanks for sitting in this tender place with me as I process my relationship with loss. Please share if anything resonated with you. You know where I am, 24/7, as always at atoosa@atoosa.com.
xo, atoosa
The soundtrack of my 🤍🖤❤:
Cried reading this. Your way with words is so admirable. May your father rest in eternal peace.