Ten years. How does a time frame of that length sneak up on a person? Because that's exactly what happened to me. It's not that I don't think about you, because I do. All the time. Yet somehow, this morning, this day, just crept up without really catching my attention, and it wasn't until I was in the midst of reading a post at The Pioneer Woman's blog that it hit me: Today is May 2.
Today is the day it happened.
The day we lost you.
I say "lost you" like we misplaced you somewhere, never to find you again. The euphemisms we use for death are silly sometimes, aren't they? Because that is what really happened. You died. Ten years ago, you had Tom drive you to the house from work because you needed to go to the hospital. The chest pains had just gotten worse over the past couple of months, and before Elisha could put her shoes on, you collapsed in the carport. While she called the ambulance and performed CPR until they arrived, I was student teaching in a classroom in Murray, oblivious to just how much my life was going to change.
It sounds like such a drastic, melodramatic statement, what I was thinking just now: I had no idea that my life would never be the same again. But it's true. Ten years ago, I had no idea just how true it would be. I think I grasped pretty immediately the fact that you were gone, that I could not see you again, and that I had not gotten to say goodbye, to say I love you, to say all the things I might have said had I known that we would be losing you like this.
What I don't think I realized, at that point, was this: For twenty-five years, we'd had a story -- the story of me and you, of us. And at that point, our story ended. All the pages to come after would be blank. It was all the tiny things, the little ways in which your life meshed with mine that would take years to understand and cope with. In some ways, I'm still learning how to manage those things, and I suspect I will always have to make adjustments.
There are so many things I still don't know, and will probably never have the chance to learn. That's why I cherish any talk I can have of you with other people, people who knew you when you were a young boy, people who worked with you as an adult, people who raised nine kinds of hell with you as a teenager. After you died, I talked about you to anyone who would listen, craving the details they could provide, hoarding them away like the precious treasure they were. I scoured the family photo albums for the too-few photos of you, like this one:
On the back is written:
Virgil Wayne Clark
2nd grade - 2 yr of school
Miss Mae Magruder - teacher
Central School - age 6
nearly 7 - born Dec. 9, 1955
Picture made Oct 1962
I smile every time someone looks at me and tells me how much I remind them of you. Sometimes they are referring to a physical resemblance, but other times I know they mean something more: my personality, my tastes, my attitude, my temper. I took some photos for a family friend last fall, and when it was over her husband told me that it had been like spending the afternoon with you. I don't think he'll ever know how much that comment meant to me.
grade school pictures of the two of us, taken around 4th or 5th grade
I love that people look at my two girls and see traces of you as well. I love that Cass still tells stories about you, and that Cami asks to hear stories all the time. You were absolutely crazy over Cass, right from the very start, and it hurts my heart to know that Cami will never know just how crazy you would've been over her too. I know how insanely proud you would've been of Cass and how smart she is -- all of her academic and athletic achievements -- and how you would've bragged on her to everyone who pulled up at your gas station. I see Cami do or say something funny, and I can hear you laugh -- I know that you would've gotten the biggest kick out of her antics, and the two of you would've been partners-in-crime, without a doubt.
I miss you, Daddy. I love you, and I miss you, and not a day goes by that I don't wish you were here with me, so that I could continue to tell our story. Instead, I'm left with a story with holes in the narrative, and no amount of editing and polishing can fix what's missing. I miss talking to you about music; I miss the arguments we had; I miss seeing you on Sundays after your weekly trip to Wal-mart to stock up for the station; I miss hearing you laugh over totally inappropriate things; I miss the sound of your voice; I miss hearing your stories; I miss tiptoeing around your temper; I miss knowing you were there, no matter what; I miss taking that knowledge for granted.
And right now, ten years after your death, I realize that I still miss you as much as ever. And I know that ten years from now, I will still miss you just this much, and I will never stop needing you to be here.
