The Space Between Doing and Feeling or How I Love My Dad

So tonight, a night when I should have been doing a million other things in preparation for my family's arrival on Christmas eve, I found myself listening to Rosanne Cash's album Black Cadillac, an album which she began writing after her father's death. Specifically the song "I was Watching You" in which she tells her father that before she was even born, she knew him because "before life, there was love." This was a bad idea, because I really, really love my dad. And as the years go by and he gets older, I feel like the reality of a life without his physical presence in the world comes closer and closer and I do not want it to. And I try to tell myself that missing him before he is gone is not helpful, that it does nothing, but even the idea of him being gone creates a vacuum inside me and I feel profoundly alone.

A part of this is good. That I love my father, that my last name, my giant round head and huge duck feet are all things I inherited from him fills me with pride, that with my life, I feel I can make good on the promises he made to himself as a child--these are wonderful things. I can't deny the fact that someday he, and everyone, will die and that it will be painful, but I also cannot forget that right now he, and I, are alive. And I have wasted my first free evening in 8 days, feeling afraid of something I cannot control and allowing my heart to break before it really has reason to.

What I find difficult, is how to clean the toilet and the bathtub, when you cannot stop thinking about how your father is... how he is almost god-like in his presence in your life, the way he finds his way into your everyday speech, the texture of your gray hairs, your eyebrows, the way you handle conflict at your job, the way you talk to people at the grocery store, the way you love being admired for your intellect, the way you love spirituality, the way you search for god (even if you have found different ones). My dad isn't just himself, his physical body. There is me, and Allan and Adrienne and all of my siblings, and he is there too. My heart beats because he existed, because he exists. So what will it do when he is gone?

And what will I do in the meantime? The problem is that I cannot not think of it, but I can't just think of it. Where is the balance? How do I find the place where he can die and I can wait to be sad and I can continue breathing and just clean the bathtub and wash the dishes in the sink and wash the sheets and be ready for him when he comes, alive and well, not as far from death as he was 20 years ago, but far still, to celebrate Christmas with his family in my unique, strange adult life? Where is this space?

It is a small space I think, a narrow hallway. And I may never find it. My life isn't necessarily the epitome of balance. Perhaps, when I feel afraid of my dad's death, I can reach further into my chest and find that what lies at the foundation of that fear, is a bottomless ocean abyss full of loyalty, gratitude and love for the first man for whom I ever felt loyalty, gratitude or love. And maybe once I am there, I will be able to clean the bathroom, so that when he gets here, he won't have to worry about slipping on the floor of my shower.