A Year Of Firsts

“You’re father would have so much fun helping you look for car”, my mother said, her eyes welling with tears. Dad had been telling me it was high time I should trade in my Now, just a few months after he passed, I was finally trading in the old rust bucket for a new car. It was something my dad would have enjoyed for sure. It was just of many new endeavors I would take on this year without his guidance and presence. Dad always made things more fun and interesting, even car shopping…

Each statement these days always seems to end or begin with “if dad was still here…” Each time I see or hear a ridiculous news item, which seems to be pretty much a daily event, I am sure he would have sent me an e-mail or phoned me with “what the hell is so and so doing…”. if he was still here. I keep remembering that refrain “if he was still here.”

This year has been a year of firsts. There was my first birthday without him. There was my first Patriots game I watched without him. There is the first holiday without him. There have been so many special moments and accomplishments I have not been able to share with him.

Even the mundane seems much less satisfying knowing that I will never be able to share it with him. Whenever I watch a documentary I think of how much we would have enjoyed talking about it (he would have loved the Vince Lombardi documentary on HBO). Even trying a new type of food or learning a tidbit from a book I just read seems less fulfilling since I cannot share these everyday gems with him. Now, everything is different. Each high point is tempered with the realization that he is not here to share it with me. A permanent void is etched in my everyday life.

When you’re a kid, you always think your folks will always be around. You can’t imagine them not being there. I mean, he was dad. He was indestructible. Bullets would bounce off his chest and his bones would be cast of steel and iron. This belief, perpetuated by his tough as nails image only re-enforced my perspective. It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized he too was human. Even still, as he grew older he was always there helping us work on our cars, installing electronics and utilizing his handyman skills around the house. It made him feel good to know he could help us.

The finality and suddenness of it all is jarring. Yet, even more jarring is that it’s never really ever final. People can go on and live there lives. We can go on and on about closure and the finality of death. But, the only finality is there is no finality. Unless you consider finality the never ending, uncontrollable rage and frustration for what seems like virtually no particular reason at all except the underlying pain. The worst part is there is nothing that can be done to fix it and it will never go back to the way things were. It’s just there. Even this new “normal” is a mere shadow of my life with him.

It may seem ironic that such a common experience, such as loss, is such a private, personal and isolating experience. It really isn’t all that ironic, though. Everyone’s loss is their own loss. It’s unique and personal to them. I could not claim to “know what it’s like” than anyone else could truly know what I have felt. Each loss is individual and unique to that person. So, we really don’t even have that common bond to share with others who have also lost someone .

There will be other firsts in the future. There will be my first Christmas without him. There will be my first time watching our favorite movies without him. Perhaps, there will even be my first wedding and subsequent divorce. He will never meet the various women who may enter my life. He will never meet his future grandson. There are many experiences we have been denied.

Dad would always tell me that “everything that lives die.” when we talked about his mortality. He had come to terms with it . It wasn’t until his death that I was able to consider my own mortality and how I should do some things different in my own life so that I can be the kind of man he was. It was a different type of first. It was the first thing he taught me since he passed.