Different

I really didn’t expect the fifth anniversary of my father’s death to hit me as hard as it did.

Granted, I’m a little vulnerable at the moment, but generally speaking, the grief I feel over the loss of him has changed drastically since that first, unbearable year of mourning. It’s lost the sharp edges, worn down instead to a smooth pebble or a piece of translucent beach glass.

I can handle it, for the most part, without blood-letting.

Just a little while ago I stood in front of my dresser mirror, rubbing lotion on my face after a late shower. It was a busy day and I didn’t get a chance to bathe this morning.

I stood there, in my pajamas, and noticed that my father’s Mass card had fallen down. I keep it tucked in the corner of my mirror; the painting of an angel on the front has been part of my daily landscape since we buried him.

I like to see it every morning, this tangible reminder of him.

Tonight it had flipped over, the Hail Mary written in script on a white background. Then, below, my dad’s name, birthday and date of his death.

I drew in a sharp breath, jagged glass in my lungs. Images I try not to recall flashed in front of my eyes. It was just for a moment, really, but my heart pounded painfully in my chest.

“Dad,” I said out loud. “I didn’t expect it to still be so hard.”

Others whose grief is far more devastating than mine are on my mind as I write this. The death of my father is a natural progression: children bury their parents. Parents should not have to bury their children.

I know there are women out there who are also now in the process of mourning their fathers, and my heart aches for them, as well.

I also know that time is an inevitability, bringing us further and further away from that day of loss and terror. I know that wounds close, I know that scars, tough and sinewy, form.

I know that while the pain is still there, it is blessedly different. I know that tonight I will go to bed with a sore heart, but that tomorrow I will be able to tuck that hard pebble of grief back in my pocket, its weight a comfort against my body.

I’d like to think that makes my father happy, where ever he may be.