There's a concept known as "having a lot on your plate." Now, what if you have too many plates to carry all at once? And what if the one thing in life that you're supremely gifted at is dropping and breaking the plates that are your destiny to carry? I am that woman, *cough* woman-child who does this on the regular. I live a life that is utterly confusing, often exasperating, but tinged with enough of God's grace to make it a real Testimony to God's love and goodness. But anyway.....
I'm writing this first post, 1 year, 2 months and 12 days since the death of my father, James Michael. He didn't go by James Michael, he went by Jim, but after his sudden passing, the being known as James Michael was made known to me. My soul wished, or his soul wished, for me to know him as James Michael, the Man, not Jim, my father. When his spirit vanished from my corporeal world, part of me wandered into the afterlife with him. Truly, I felt like I died that day and was "Reset" rather than reborn. Because until you go through the utter shock of coming downstairs into your family room and see one of your most loved people on earth who grew you (like a demented rose choked by a demoniac ivy) and took care of you from 0-43, silent and cold as a statue, with all the air gone out of the room, you don't know what loss feels like.
Of course, I was in shock - but didn't realize it because I was in "emergency action mode," the one I've easily slipped in during people's suicide attempts, or during other medical emergencies, including Dad's stroke in 2019. From the moment my mother knocked sharply on my bedroom door, and said in a calm but strangled voice, "I can't wake Dad," I went into "let's get this straightened out" thought process, grabbed my shoes, got dressed hurriedly, and stormed into their bedroom to call 911. I didn't know it wasn't their bedroom anymore, or their house, but I knew this was about to be my problem in a very big way. I barked orders at the dispatcher, gave them the details calmly, about how he was "unresponsive" or something to that effect, and demanded instructions on how to perform CPR until the paramedics arrived. I expected to find him lying on the couch, unconscious, and that something was going to be able to be done -- but that's not what I found. What i found was my dear father, sitting up in the wrong spot, not his spot on the couch, but a spot in the middle I rarely saw him in. His hands were curled, but not into fists ; one of them was even around the remote. He had been watching Mass, which is one of the most Catholic things a Catholic could be doing at the time of their death. It was a joke I told over and over, as I grappled with the ever-present choking grief that hung like a rug soaked in icewater over every part of my life after that. I followed the directions of the dispatcher, who didn't want me to be concerned about "him hitting his head on the floor" when Mom and I moved him off the couch. I tried so hard, begging Jesus for a miracle one more time, pressing down on his chest, jumping when air burst out of his mouth in a long sigh, and startling me into thinking he actually breathed when....he hadn't. The paramedics arrived and took over, and my Mom gathered me in her lap, as we sat in the kitchen to wait while they worked on Dad. I kept hearing through this fog, "no life detected" from the defibrillator. "Over and over" until I almost fucking snapped. I almost shoved my way into the family room to grab the damned machine to shock him myself. But all I could do was wait helplessly, crying, sick to my very core, as I hysterically called and texted my brothers to tell them what was happening. When they came back in and pronounced him "deceased" this cold, flaccid word which didnt quite cover the violent shock of finding him dead, I think i might have wailed. I know I walked around the house after I said goodbye to his body, after I'd sung him "Be Not Afraid," the beautiful Catholic hymn from the spiritual soundtrack of my childhood, and wailed. I wailed over and over, howled in darkest anguish, for him to "come back to me." My uncle B drove from NY and was there within 2 hours. Dying inside, I shakily selected the photos of my Dad that would go up during the wake in a few days. I couldn't believe my Dad was now a memory in all of our hearts and minds and my confused brain couldn't process that he wasn't about to walk in the door every day after.
This complete rupture of my very psyche, something that shattered all the parts that ever been regrown after all my varied traumas, was something I couldn't even understand until now. And what happened after he died, within my own family, within my social interactions that shaped me further....was utterly mind-bending....but we'll get to that later.
So you get to meet me here, on a bad day in 2023, feeling low, lost, and wandering, a lost little girl who's also supposed to be a powerful psychic healer, a professional singer and songwriter, but has been dropping those highly important plates more often than not. Today I feel cold in my remembering, empty of all the things that make me me. Today I needed to start this blog, so that I can take the next steps of integrating this loss into the fabric of my existence....so I can continue to exist, period.
