The Grief Diet: On the loss of my father

My dad always managed to keep the monsters away. Some of them real and others imagined. I won’t bore you with my fears of vampires and Freddy Krueger. Obviously they don’t exist. Rather I will write of one dark creature that did exist.

This monster’s name was Richard.

He was my mom’s boyfriend for ten plus years. He has other nicknames but they are too vulgar for me to post. He was terribly abusive to my mother and his own children.

The scary thing about him was his tirades were never instigated by an outside source, such as drugs or alcohol. His cruelty existed naturally.

So after spending months living in his hell along with his other captives (my mom and his children), I managed to escape. I was only 8 years old. I had found freedom and had moved in with my dad.

Clyfford Still, "Untitled (Fear)" (1945)

Years went by and my mom would leave Monster every now and then. She would eventually return, and his venom continued to spew.* He made it a point to threaten all of those who he felt were attempting to usurp his power over my mom. He made threatening phone calls to my dad and other family members. Some threats were to beat us all up and other threats were to kill us. He had also threatened to kidnap me and had actually made a physical attempt to do so. I don’t recall the specific details of what really went on. I do, however, remember watching my sweet grandmother cry after speaking to Monster on the phone. God knows what he said to her that day.

Wanting to protect my grandmother and fearing for my safety, my dad and I left grandma’s sanctuary, homeless. That whole summer we lived in either a hotel or in our brown and green station wagon. When the threats died down, we headed north. We pitched our tent in the little town of Yreka, far away from L.A. and from bad memories. He wanted a fresh start for us. He told me he could easily lose me in a big city and preferred a small town so he could keep an eye on me.

Looking back on the events of that summer, I don’t recall one time being afraid of Monster or any other ones for that matter. I always felt safe with my dad. To me he was the strongest man alive. He fought battles that I never knew about until I was much older. He had a way of keeping the scary things of this world at bay.

I wasn’t sheltered but I never lived in fear.

Since that summer, I have come into contact with other types of monsters (luckily, none like Richard (aka “Asshole”)). But it hasn’t been until now that they have found their way in my closet or under my bed. Some are real and some have only been conjured up in my head. My warrior is no longer here to chase them away.

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*My mom did eventually escape Monster for good in 1989.

My dad was never specific about what he wanted. Every Christmas I would ask him, “Dad what would you like for Christmas”? Every time, he answered, “nothing.” Same response each birthday. But, when I asked him a few months before he died where he wanted his ashes spread, without hesitation he said, “Lake Siskiyou.” I was honored that he chose a place we had gone so many times.

So with a little white box that contained my dad’s ashes, I set out with my husband and children to California. My in-laws had reserved us all a cabin about 20 miles south of the lake. I didn’t know when or exactly where I was going to spread them. I took some time alone and just sat in one of the cabin’s bedrooms. I decided to write him a letter. Not really a goodbye letter but to tell him how I felt about him. So while sobbing uncontrollably, I wrote. I listened to Andres Segovia for a while and then Pablo Casals. My father had introduced me to the classical guitarist and cellist years prior. I fondly remember the two of us sitting there for hours listening. Music brought him so much pleasure.

After a while my husband came into the room and asked me, “when do you want to spread his ashes?” We looked at each other and simultaneously said, “now?” It was around 10 p.m. My dad didn’t like large crowds and he was a night owl, so it seemed like a perfect time. We got in the van and drove to the lake. As we approached our destination, we were surprised to see thousands of cars. We could not figure out why there were so many people until we remembered that it was July 4th. Independence Day. Everyone was packing up and heading home after the fireworks at the lake.

I was disappointed because I wanted to spread them specifically at the lake. But too many people. My dad would not have liked that, so we kept driving on this winding road that circled around to the backside of the lake, surrounded by mountains and pine trees. It was pitch black. I told my husband that I would know when the time was right. You see, when my dad and I moved to Yreka, we had no destination in mind. We just drove north on I-5 and passed this little town of Yreka. My dad said, “This looks like a nice place to live.” So we moved there. It was that simple.

The further my husband and I drove, the more remote things became. Finally, I said, “This looks like the place.” We parked on the side of the road, stepped out of the van, and I found a river flowing underneath a bridge. The river runs right into his favorite fishing lake. So in the pitch black, I walked to the bridge. Barely able to stand, I let him go. His ashes floated gently into the water.

I told my husband that I needed a few minutes alone. I climbed on top of the van, lay down, and hoped to see the stars. My dad and I enjoyed doing that, especially when I was a little girl. Unfortunately, there had been fires in that area and I couldn’t see anything. My husband had given up and retreated into the van. I said my goodbyes to my father, blew him a kiss, and started to get off the van. I looked one more time up into the sky and to my amazement the smoke had cleared. There were a million stars in the sky. I yelled for my husband and he was also astounded at the sudden revelation of stars.

I called my mom the next day and told her that my dad had made a way for me to see the stars that night. She said, “Kim, he has always made it possible for you to see the stars.”