Veronica Ponce

Six Months is a Long Time

Six months ago today we buried my father. I haven't been able to write about it because I always said I would when it stopped hurting so much. But six months has done little to ease the void I feel. Instead I've just learned to live with it -- like an endless affliction or crippling ailment with no known cure. The pain of not having him hasn't eased not one bit. I can still cry on a whim when I think about him and I still feel the vast chasm of time from the day he left this earth. The world seems emptier without him. 

I miss him every single day. Sometimes I'll look at pictures or hear my playlist devoted to him, and just cry by myself. It's so easy to cry. Sometimes I'll lie in bed and I'll be in that place where you're not really asleep but you're not really dreaming, and I'll see him or hear him and it will feel so real. When I'm very quiet and very still, I can hear his voice. One day I was lying in bed and I could've sworn I heard him say my name -- it felt so real that I literally jumped up in bed and felt my heart race through my chest. And when I realized it was just my mind playing tricks on me, it felt like he died all over again.

Every time I run out of milk I remember how he never let me run out of milk, or bananas, or Diet Coke. How I was in his every thought. How much he loved my children. I miss his grumbling and complaining about pretty much everything. How in one breath he would get mad at the kids, and in the next sit down and watch back to back episodes of iCarly with them.

I think of the disappointments I caused him and the words I never said and I know that even if I would've done everything right, I would still feel as sad. But having something to linger on gives me instant justification when I go to that dark place in my thoughts and I'm looking for a reason to be there and mourn for him. His presence in my life was a comfort that I will never get over losing. The perfection of that kind of love can never be duplicated and knowing I will never experience it again makes me sad to the point of despair some days.

Every time I cry for any reason, some of those tears are over him. In my darkest moments about anything at all, the sadness of losing my father still grips my heart and ricochets through my gut and no matter what I do, or try not to do, when I'm sad for any reason at all I think of him and it makes me even sadder. Sadness is the perfect place to be sometimes.

They say that crying and writing are therapeutic. In a way I think that's true. It helps to get it out -- but only temporarily. It doesn't really take away any of the pain, it just wears you out to think and talk and write and cry. So you get tired of feeling, until you get the energy to do it all over again.

I'll never forget those last few months. It all began on Easter Sunday when he sat in my house and complained about shortness of breath. A few days later I got the call at work that he had asked to be taken to the hospital and instantly I felt that punch that blows straight through your gut and out your back and it cripples you and leaves you breathless because you know. You just know. Well, I knew. At that moment I knew. And in April when the doctor said he had 8-12 months to live I knew there was no hope no matter what anyone said or what we did. But what I didn't know is that it would be only five.

The last time I saw him wearing a diaper and being carried from the wheelchair to the bed I felt the entire weight of the world inside of me. In that instant I knew I could no longer wish for him to live. The worst part was that he had lost his shame. The manly pride had dissipated as he waited for someone, anyone to sit him up or lay him down. I didn't want my father to live like that but I couldn't wish for him to die either. 

It's so hard. It still hurts. I could write an entire book and it wouldn't be enough. There hasn't been a word invented that really grasps the magnitude of a loss like this. There is an emptiness unlike any other emptiness I have ever experienced that walks with me always. When I'm sad about anything at all, the hole gets deeper. And when I'm happy, it's an ache that I can't share my joy with him and that he left not knowing if I was okay. He left worried about me and I didn't want that. I wanted him to know that I was okay even if I really wasn't.

It's been six months and I still haven't erased his number from my phone although the line was canceled long ago. I can't bring myself to delete it as stupid as that may sound. I still listen to the voice mails he left me...often. I only have two right now and you would think I listen because there was some beautiful poignant message but the truth is all he says is, "Veronica, it's me. Call me when you get this message." But hearing him say my name is enough, maybe because it's the most tangible thing I have left. The most real part of life, his daily calls. I miss those too.

It's been six months since I've seen my dad, and today six months feels like a very long time.

Red + Blue = Purple

If you want to make the color purple, you always mix red and blue. You can't get purple by mixing red with yellow because that will give you orange. It doesn't matter if you like yellow better than blue. Yellow with red will never make purple. You don't have to make purple, you can go with orange if you prefer. But if you want purple, there is only one way to get it.

If you want to look at the stars, you can only do so on a dark night. You can't see the stars when the sun is out. It doesn't matter if you prefer daytime to nighttime. Sunlight never produces a starlit sky. You don't have to look at the stars, you can wait until daytime if you prefer. But if you want to see the stars, there is only one way to do so. 

Color and darkness are two great metaphors for life. Our lives are constantly flowing through waves of colorful splendor and joy, and treks through dark valleys of anguish and hurt. But in order to achieve the end result we have been created for and which is our ultimate purpose in life, we have to undergo both at different times and recognize and appreciate the beauty in them equally. Sometimes it's our own doing, but more often than not it's God speaking to us in subtle ways through situations and even through people. If we're not paying attention, those intricately woven plans that God has for us may seem more like nuisances than answered prayers. And so it's always up to us to decide -- free will in its finest hour. Do we want what we want or what God wants? Do we really want God to help us or do we want God to do it our way? It's always our choice in the end.

If we want to accomplish something, or get to any point in our lives, or have a certain type of life, we have to combine just the right elements to get there. There is no way around it. We can't decide to mix things up and not expect certain results. Two plus two is always four. You may not like it. But that's the way it is. Truth is not relative or dependent. It is self sufficient and doesn't need our permission for its existence. It is what it is. And it doesn't matter how we may try to manipulate or contort situations, they stand on their own merit.

You see, it doesn't matter how much we like something, or someone, or some place. It doesn't matter where we want to be at the moment, who we want to be with or what we want to be doing. Whatever we ultimately want from our lives has a necessary course of action and a specific combination of elements that will produce it. Often we can only get what we really want by making what are sometimes very difficult decisions that seem amiss at the time. But the hardest thing is often the right thing even if it feels like the wrong thing. 

Feelings don't change facts. Although the steps we may have to take may seem harsh, abrupt or just simply out of our comfort zone, in the end, we can only get to a certain destination by choosing not only the right road but also the appropriate method of travel that will get us there. Sometimes we may have to sit in the dark and wait. The dark may feel uncertain. And the fear of the unknown journey ahead may be disconcerting. But that's okay because the darkest skies produce the brightest stars and our darkest moments may just be where we end up shining the most.

There Is A Time For Letting Go

The hard thing is knowing when that time is. 

There's a timeless quote that says, "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was." How true.

It's like we hold on to moments, memories, feelings, or even people so tightly. We think that the tighter we pull those things to our chest, the less likely they are to slip away -- the more they become ours. And if we take an even firmer hold, they are ours to keep indefinitely. If we do everything right, just perfectly right, then everything will be how it's supposed to be. We formulate plans and envision outcomes. We manipulate circumstances. We conceive scenarios. We think we're in control. But holding on to something... to anything... is like holding sand. Sure you can keep some of it for a little while, but not all of it. Eventually the sand finds a way out through the gaps in our fingers. 

And just like that, the things and people we love can be gone too -- slipping through the gaps of our inadequate efforts and unavailing declarations. 

I heard this quote the other day, "When anything becomes everything, it very quickly becomes nothing." Isn't that just so true? There is nothing permanent in this life and therefore nothing that we can wage all our bets on. Everything changes. People come and go and the world doesn't seem to notice. I can almost see the scene in my head played out. A busy street, people hustling on their way somewhere insignificant, completely oblivious to the fact that something has changed within us. Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever looked around at people and thought, "Why don't they get it?" It feels so lonely in that place. It's that self-centered place that each of us cowers to when we feel defeated. Where we close our eyes to reality and envision the world, not as it really is, but as it is from our perspective. When did we become the center of the world? When did we become the standard for justice that gives us a right to say, "it's not fair." Do we think we are the sun and that the entire universe has to revolve around us? 

Some things have to be released in order to go away -- things like resentments and disappointments that find harbor within our psyche and cause more damage to us than to the proprietors of the deed; or the times people have let us down or hurt us; or maybe even the guilt or shame we feel because we have done the same to others. I have hurt many people. Some of them don't even know it. But for every injury I've ever caused, whether deliberately or unintentionally, maliciously or innocently, I have made an excuse for it in my little mind and eventually I have always paid a price. And I have realized that in all circumstances, I would rather be hurt by someone than be the one doing the hurting. It's harder to let go of the things I've done than of the things that have been done to me so I'm trying to make better, more thought out decisions, governed by clarity and answered prayers, rather than with my own wants and desires.

So I'm letting go of all of it now. At least I'm going to try, because I want what God wants for me even if what God wants for me is not what I want. I'm letting go of the things I can't change, the people I can't keep and the life I can't plan. And yet something in me tells me it's still going to turn out the way it's supposed to be.