The Power of Love (And Grief)

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” -C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves"

My relationship with my father had been strained for years before he developed Alzheimers.  After he got sick, I couldn’t find it in me to be mad at him anymore.  We once had a horrible fight about 5 years before he got sick, where I told him that I hated him and I wished he was dead.  Though we sort of mended our way after that, he never forgot it.  It is my belief that when he lost his memories, that was one of the last remaining memories he still held.  I believe this because when I visited him in the nursing home, he would often look at me and burst into tears, especially towards the end.  My mom said he didn’t do that for anyone else.  It was too late to tell him I was sorry and that I did love him.  Of course I tried, but I don’t know if it registered.  He died in the spring of 2014.  I was pretty numb and hollow inside when it happened, feeling little but the icy numbness that had enveloped me for several years (crocodile tears were all i managed at that time).  As the year winded down, I got into the Harry Potter movies/books.  Previously I never gave it much thought in spite of its immense popularity as I always thought it was a children’s story.  How wrong I was, Harry Potter is for everyone, from the youngest to oldest.  And what a great story it is!  It encompasses everything from hope and redemption to betrayal and loss.  And of course in the great tradition of all really great stories, of good triumphing over evil in the end.  It has become one of my most beloved book(s) and I think I may have even told my son I want to be buried with my HP book collection (I am always fanatical to the point of insanity when I love something).  Im bringing this up because the HP story played a pivotal role in helping me to begin grieving my father.  It was the key that unlocked the tsunami of emotions I had buried deep, way down deep inside.  I spent that winter (it was a particularly cruel and unforgiving winter too) crying my heart out over the books.  Dumbledore’s death (do I really need to put a spoiler alert here-I mean everyone knows by now Dumbledore dies right?) had me sobbing for the better part of 2 days.  Wrapped in a blanket, book clutched to my chest, weeping uncontrollably until it hit me, that it was my dad who I was really (finally) mourning. 

As all those feelings came crashing back up to the surface, they tore through the icy numbness I had been cocooned in for the past few years (of which I blogged much about).  Grief then, when finally allowed to come up for air, had a cleansing effect on me.  Destroying the hardness I had accumulated from years of bullshit and fuckery.  Allowing all those long-buried emotions to rise up again.   It wasn’t that I had turned to stone, as I once mused here in 2012, it was more that I buried myself alive.  My heart, my feelings, all the good inside of me, all the love I had, sealed safely in my "casket of selfishness" for far too long, desperate to breathe air again. The heart of stone cracked, and there protected inside, was my real heart, battle-scarred and damaged but still alive.  Still capable of feeling once more.  Love is truly the greatest gift we are given.  And there is a terrible beauty in the fact that my dad, the first person in my world that I ever truly loved, would restore love back to me, through his death.   
I realized too late, that i never really told him that i loved him,  no matter what.  That I will spend the rest of my life missing him.  That I see so much of him in myself, my son, my nieces and nephew and know that he lives on through us.  His offbeat personality, kooky humor and silliness, his little dance he used to do.  I can picture him wherever he is, doing his little dance, waiting for someone to come dance with him.  I know when i close my eyes for the last time here in this world, he will be the first person I see over there in that other world.  

 I love you, I’ve always loved you and I will always love you, till we meet again somewhere over the rainbow.  

“You think the dead we have loved ever truly leave us?  You think that we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?  Your father is alive in you, Harry…….” – Harry Potter, Prisoner of Azkaban.