Grief?

there's no point to this post except to say it all

I can’t call Mike dad, because he’s not my dad, as a matter of fact he’s not even my father in law so I don’t even know how to tell people about my grief. It doesn’t ring right when I say my partner’s dad died. then they think the pain is just caring for my partner, feeling her pain, comforting her. and it is that — a lot of that. The other day Ash was sitting in front of me on the couch, leaned back between my legs. Her head halfway obscured my view of the TV but since Mike was killed, I let a lot slide. I stared at the back of her head thinking, the back of her head had a dad a month ago, and now it doesn’t, but it’s still the back of her head and she’s alive. The back of her head looks the same but everything has changed.

Before his death, I imagined this type of grief as time standing still - maybe everything stops and waits until you’re ready for time to move forward. But time didn’t stand still at all, we got on a plane the next day and took a selfie in first class, a joke because the plane only had about twenty rows of seats. Of course that would be the only time we fly first class. We had two seats in the first row that weren’t next to each other, but I asked the guy next to me if he’d switch with her. “Her dad died”, I explained to him, but he’d already been nodding in agreement before I told him about her dad. Her dad died, I repeated to him, thinking to myself how the fuck could he just nod when he’s heard such world shattering news? But he was already in the other seat.

We grieved with her family. Her brothers and I exchanged wordless hugs. I held the back of Sam’s head and rubbed his neck when he cried and told us the story of what happened. A tenderness that suddenly felt right. We wandered around Goodwill in northwest Arkansas trying to find t-shirts that fit me because I didn’t know what to pack for a trip like this, and ended up packing 16 pairs of socks and 2 t shirts. We went to Ulta and Ash bought an exfoliating scrub and rubbed her body vigorously in the shower, saying she just wanted to feel something. We laid on a couch bed for over a week while we waited for some right moment to go. I guess we thought we’d know when it was okay to leave the house that was now empty of her father, to leave the Chaco’s he’d worn that day behind on the staircase, to leave his desk with all of his half written papers neatly organized in them. But we didn’t, so we just left. We got on a plane and celebrated Ash’s birthday in Miami and grieved on the beach and ate crab legs. Then we came home and grieved at work, on the couch, with friends, and grief looked like time moving along and like both nothing had changed at all and everything had changed at the same time.

I still have a dad, so I can’t say my dad died, because he’s alive even though he’s never fully been anywhere but in his own world. Not that my dad isn’t kind, lovable, and sensitive, but he hasn’t filled a father role the way we want dads to. But I can’t just say my partner’s dad died when it feels like a dad died for me too. So I feel like a faker in grief, grieving a dad who wasn’t really mine to hold.

Mike was a capital D dad, the kind who mows the lawn and drinks a lot and votes republican and fixes things and spoils you and drives you around and notices what’s wrong with your house and knows what aisle the plumbers tape is in and what kind of tools you need and how to navigate the bulk screw section of home depot and find the studs in your walls and put up the pull up bar in your gym and takes testosterone to get strong and works out and was in the navy.

I resented Ash in a way for having a dad like this, even though she shared him with me. And I feel so fucking stupid for insisting I keep him at arms length even though I knew his love for me was real. I did what every trans person does with a republican and fought with him and resented his vote and took his disregard for my people and my family’s safety personally and saw it as an act of hatred towards me and ignored him every time he reached out to me since the election. I had written him a text before the election, one last beg to ask him to think of me, to prove his love for me, to prove I’m family and he responded saying he loves me but he wouldn’t change his vote, and I never spoke to him again. He did what dads and men do, by not apologizing but trying to make amends by sending me links to workout shorts on sale. and I assumed my silence would change him because one day he would wake up and understand why I was hurt and scared by him and people like him. But then he died and now he’s just gone forever and we won’t talk again and I’m a hypocrite for sobbing over him and wanting more time with him when I showed him I wanted less and less.

What I have left of him is a bottle of PVC cement, the purple adhesive dripping down the side, on our basement shelf. Our sink clogged the last time he was here and he taught me how to replace the pipe in the basement to clear the clog. A ceiling fan in every room, because he insisted on a project every time he visited us but then bitched about it the entire time. A pear cider in the fridge that he was saving for his next visit. A ring he had made to match Ash’s when she was a kid. I look at the ring a lot, and I remember one of our last times as just us two - I took him to the gym with me when he visited us and he was different when it was just the two of us. He was encouraging, soft, and sincere. I didn’t see this version of him often, I don’t think a lot of people did. Most who remember him remember his jokes, his vibrancy, his energy, his childlike chaos. For his 60th birthday he wanted a family trip to Prague and we went. We stayed for a week - me reluctantly because I couldn’t imagine spending that much time with anyone’s family. At the end, Ash cried when we said goodbye - strange because she never cried at any other goodbyes in the ten years I’d known her. He noticed and chuckled, “why are you crying?” he said it in his typical teasing tone at first, then softened, “aw, you gonna miss me? i’ll see you soon” he said with his voice cracking. There it was, the softness again. Only a few ever got it. I wonder if he knew I would miss him too.