You’re 60 today, and at least you would have been. I wish
you were here to celebrate it with all of us, instead of me being here crying
into my dry cereal (we ran out of milk).
60? What a foreign taste in my mouth. In your own words, at
least you didn’t make it to 50. I wish you had made it to 60. I wish you had
made it to 95, like most people do these days. Grandma made it to 89 – you
should have too. That would have given me at least another 40 years with you.
But I digress…
Aunt Kate says you had been sick for a few months before you
told us – the doctors don’t even know when the tumors formed, for all they knew
you could have been living[dying] for years before the symptoms arose. “For all
they know” – how is that even a thing? How is it that, in the land of great
opportunity and healthcare, you carried on while the reaper slowly but surely
took parts of you from us and no one noticed?
What am I even paying for these days? Something completely
optional that not all can afford. And why wouldn’t you think healthcare
is optional? You lived in a country that treats healthcare like it is an
option, instead of a necessity. If you’d been a citizen of any other first
world country on this planet you might be alive today. This is quickly turning
into a political rant, and we’re getting pretty close to the next presidential
election – not my intent, but you died 4 days after Bush was re-elected for a
second term (at least you got to miss out on that disaster) and we’ve had a
black president AND some pretty progressive candidates since, and I wonder
where you’d fall on the spectrum. I don’t miss you for your politics, however –
I miss you for your wisdom.
You told me to always be my own woman
and to never let a man make my choices for me – I wonder if you knew I’d become
the feminist I am today. I hope I’ve made you proud on that front, because I’ve
gotten the “angry femnazi lesbian” insults that go along with it and it was so hard
to get where I am today because I had to learn how to be a woman from an angry
alcoholic man-child that looks like Tom Selleck. I wonder who I would have
become if I had your continued guidance.
I’ve missed you a lot over these past 10 years. I go through
waves – sometimes I’m sad, sometimes I’m okay, sometimes I’m downright pissed
off. Today I’m pissed. Today I’m writing this letter. Today I woke up and
swallowed the pill that instead of celebrating with you, or your family and
your grandson you never met, I’d be here, just existing. So here I am, sitting
in the Starbucks that fired me, writing this letter-turned-rambling mess and
looking at my cup of water cause you always said I should start the day with a
glass of it (as you drank coffee instead – I’m going to drink coffee instead).
2015 has been so, so hard.
I thought nothing could top 2004, but damn this year takes the cake. I’ve had
breakups and letdowns and job losses and weight losses and numerous midnights
crying out, reaching for you but you aren’t here to take my hand anymore, you
haven’t been for 10 years and I’m so angry.
I’m angry all the time and it’s unbelievably exhausting. I feel like I have
nothing left to give, but the rage is always there, simmering beneath the
surface. I am the wolf only barely contained, and I fear one day that animal
will consume me. I fear that day is close. Did you ever have anger problems?
Dad sure did – wonder where I got it from.
I hope you can forgive me for the hate I’ve been feeling
lately. It’s a dark thing in me that people are only beginning to notice, like how
your cancer made a gradual entrance into our lives. You told me to let things
go or they’d eat me alive, and Mom, I’m in pieces, left on the ground after
they gorged themselves on me. But I’m still here, this half creature, with half
a heart and half a degree and half a set of parents (although I don’t talk to
your husband anymore. I hope you can forgive me for that as well).
I hope for your 61st birthday I’ll have a nicer
letter to write. I hope by then I’ll have nicer things to write about. I hope
by then I’ll be a nicer person, a nicer creature, a whole creature.
To end this unintentionally dismal entry of poetry and
nonsense, I’ll just say this: I love you. I wish you were here.
Love,
Katie Bird
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