Reaching for Eudaimonia

These muggy summers have me missing the fresh air of springtime. I miss the budding lilies in your resting place where the softest moss grows in place of tragedy. Sometimes I run out there through the twigs leaving snags in my shirts and my hands feeling their way through brush. I know I get small cuts on my knuckles but it's worth it to talk to you. I miss those days when the house would be quiet enough to hear the hum of the geothermal system you managed to experiment with. You would curse under your breath when you found that the basement had flooded (yet again). I would chuckle silently hearing you come up the stairs in a huff. If you were here I'd ask you if it was alright that I had made all these mistakes in your absence. I would ask you what it is I'm supposed to be looking for. I would ask you for help. Mom called this my love letter to my father. I suppose it is, really. I made my peace long ago not to discuss my pain in full detail with people. I neve...

I can breathe again after months of claustrophobic memories ruling my sleep. They're finally gone. I am still me, but I'm different somehow. Wiser, perhaps. Maybe a little more safeguarded. When I let myself be fragile to people who didn't mind hurting me, I had opened myself up for a battle of thorns. I was growing a black rose garden in my chest, but I've somehow managed to paint them back to red again with forgiveness, watering them with acceptance. I'm searching instead for kindness and understanding. I think I've seen it too, in a pair of deep brown eyes. Fresh starts. It's funny how you never see them coming. Written 6.3.17

Dear Dad, Today I turned 19. It was the first time in 10 years that you weren't there for my birthday. Remember when we used to always pick a restaurant to go to that no one in the family had heard of so they were forced to try something new? I remember how you used to laugh so secretly. I thought it was such a diabolical plan. Today feels weird without you here. My favorite part about my birthday became sharing it with you when I was 8 years old. I would always memorize what day yours would be on before mine because I knew that whatever week of the day yours fell on, mine would be exactly one week later. One thing I missed when I woke up today was one of your signature cat birthday cards. I loved how year after year you would go and find the craziest looking cat card and write something quite clever on the inside. I always looked forward to your quips and you always looked forward to my reaction (which was usually faked annoyance). Secretly we both loved it. So now...

These last four years have been just awful for my personal life. I have felt loss after loss, picking myself up slowly just to be hit again. I've felt each sharp stab and ache from the tearing and healing of my heart. With every new betrayal or loss I've felt like I've been auctioning off my parts.  "You want my heart?"  Take it, it's a wreck anyway.  "Do I hear an offer for my lungs?" That's fine, you can have them. I already feel like I'm drowning by making you comfortable with your ideas about love.  "Any bidders for my arms and legs?"  Take them if you must. I've grown used to comforting myself in silence and remaining in one place.  *** The year after Howard died we saw who our true friends were. Some people felt very uncomfortable around us. We could feel it even though they never said a word. It's almost incredible how dull you feel after loss but how sometimes you have this hei...

One of my earliest memories of Howard was when I was around 5 or 6 when he was dating Mom. I was waiting up for her to come home, but I was really excited to see him too. I had on one of those pink nightgowns with one of the Disney princesses on the front. My hair was a chaotic mess of curls and tangles, partially because I hated to brush it and partially because Mom always brushed it for me before I went to bed.  Grandma had the fan whirling around in the kitchen at a medium speed, occasionally clicking when it rocked because a screw was loose somewhere.  I sat in Grandma's chair at the table, leaning back and watching out the window for headlights. My eyes felt itchy and dry and all I wanted to do was shut them for just a moment. I knew I couldn't though. I had to wait for Mom to get home.  I looked around the room, noticing the pictures of fruit all over the walls. Small ones, big ones, with the addition of fake fruit stuffed into wooden baskets for dec...

Running with him was as much a part of me as my bones or my heart. The day he died my heartbeat seemed to slow to a melody I didn't recognize. I kept trying to find the tempo, the exact moment my inner conductor decided to signal a molto ritardando.  I couldn't do it.  I was too slow to rewind myself backward. I was stuck in slow motion, moving from room to room with dragged feet and crumpled shirts. My body forgot what it felt like to hit the ground hard and confident, pushing against it to move forward.    I was used to my heartbeat being synchronized to his when we would race towards the finish line. Now that he was gone, who was I going to run next to? The couch became my coffin for a year. My eyes were constantly in motion, shifting from the television to our old cat that would stare out the window, wondering when he was going to come in from outside. I would have to tell her to come away. I would try to shelter her under the blankets and hold her ti...

Grief will find and affect us all one way or another.   For me, the inevitability of that statement was disturbingly profound.  Researching grief and coping mechanisms felt like wading through a pool of murky water. I first started out looking for blogs like mine that talked about a specific loss. Most of the blogs I found I couldn’t relate to because a lot of them were about spouses or people who lost their parents later in life. I then moved on to watching Ted Talks to see what some of their speakers were saying about grief.  I even searched the self-help section of Barnes and Noble for information.  What I did find got me meditating on an assumption that grief can be very reliant on culture. Thus begging the question: If culture really is a independent factor, how are we supposed to grieve? When I started researching grief I found there were some cultures out there that, in a way, celebrated the end of life—one with jazz music. An article on ...

Dear Dad, I trusted someone. I really trusted someone and they broke it.  “You’re only broken if you choose to be,” You said to me after my first heartache. “I know, I know,” I say to you out loud in the heavy darkness of the guestroom. I can’t sleep in my room. I can’t spend more than two minutes in there. “Get out of your head. Stop replaying that part. Stop thinking about it. You didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t let this break you,” You say. But it has. “What if I can’t do it on my own?” I ask you.   No reply. They come over, one after the other, in the afternoon when the sun is setting just below the treetops. The living room is painted pink by the sunset. That used to make me smile. They tell me they can’t see beyond the wall I’ve put up. They say when they search my eyes for recognition they can see I’m inhabiting some other world. I remember this world. I remember it too well. Their arms are like anchors around my body trying to...

My father was the most rational person that I knew. He could help anyone pull themselves out of an emotional breakdown. He knew I was an over-thinker... a really destructive over-thinker. He would always pull me out when I would bury myself with the world.  He would ask me how I could take something so small and insignificant and somehow warp it into something that didn't resemble the original.  I didn't have an answer to this. I joked with him that my over-thinking could be helpful when planning a plot twist in one of my novels, but we both knew that it was a problem.   I wish he was here to give me advice. I am going through an emotional earthquake as of late. Yet, I know what he would tell me to do.  "Don't let anyone have that much control over your emotions, Kateleigh." I still hear his words in my head, although his face has started to fade. I haven't managed to figure out how to implement this life lesson. Sometimes I wonder if...

Dear Dad, You died a year ago today. The foggy recollection that this is no longer an approaching inevitability, but rather a fact that I need to accept is mind-numbingly painful. I still try to remember that day, the day you left us. Sometimes the memories seem hazy, but other times I see it in a monotonous pattern constantly on replay. A year ago it was sunny and unnaturally warm for the first day of December. It was a Sunday and I had come home straight after my weekend job at the little mom-and-pop café. When I got home you were dressed to do yard work. “How was work?” You asked. “Fine. Kind of a slow day, actually,” I replied. You smiled and gave me a hug. I was glad to be home. I had a test in Physics that coming Thursday and wanted to study as much as I could. Mom was cleaning the kitchen, preparing for dinner. You said that you wanted something spicy to eat. We planned on watching Masterpiece Theatre that night. “Are you going outside to work?...