Nikki Lee Health

My stepmother has sent me several boxes full of photographs that were my grandmother’s; I have never seen most of them. Mixed in with photographs of the young marrieds that were my grandparents, are photographs of my father as a young baby, a toddler, a kid, a and young man. I’ve never known or thought of him like that; he was always Daddy to me, attractive, distant, tall, and often absent.

He never gave me stories from his life before me. Only now, that he has died,do I learn about his past, and that of his family, especially his parents. All the photographs, some over 90 years old, have stirred up many emotions.

My life is like a 66-year old length of woven cloth; the warp and the woof are emotions, events and experiences. My father was a warp thread, running the entire length of my being, from conception until now. That thread ended on February 19th, 2016,  leaving a space that can never be refilled.

This space is disorienting; I am overwhelmed and not sure what I am feeling.  I am discovering the person that was my father in the 25 years before me,  without his commentary, guidance, or willingness. I am exploring a hole in a piece of cloth, and wishing so much that I could talk with him just one more time.

I am struck by the repeating family physical characteristics: my grandfather holding my baby father in the photograph on the right looks like my father holding me, in another picture from 25 years later.  My first daughter and my father have an eerie resemblance to each other.

This side of grief is strange.