“please connect me…”

My daughter is now living in my parent’s old house.  She has rearranged and added things so that it feels like her home now. It still feels so strange for me though. There is not a single inch of that house that is not filled to overflowing with memories.

They brought me home from the hospital to that house, as they did my sister and finally my brother.  I remember getting a LOT of spankings in that house because stubborn is part of my DNA. Even though daddy made sure I was well acquainted with the consequences of sassing or disobedience the tears (and sore backside) only hover around the edges of my memory.

Daddy would tickle us until we were either "rescued" by mama or escaped. My kids still laugh about how daddy would do the tickle routine but when they managed to get out of his grip those little ‘brats’ would grab his crutches and run with them. Of course daddy knew what they didn’t at the time. His chair was near the door and eventually they would come back his way. If they were lucky they could sneak the crutches back beside the chair and keep to the edge of the room. 

I grew up knowing that daddy was different from my friend’s dads. Daddy had his own small business and he worked long hours and the income was notoriously unpredictable.   Of course I knew that he had a pretty significant limp but that only meant he wasn’t going to be chasing around the yard with us. My brother felt the loss of that more keenly than we did. There was no playing catch in the yard or tossing a football. Daddy was prone to falling, which meant potential broken bones.

Things are what they are. Of COURSE I wished he didn’t have the wreck but wishing doesn’t make it so. My daddy limped. You learned to walk a bit slower so that maybe other people would blame your lazy "I’ve got all day" pace rather than the limp.

As he got older there were so many operations that I literally lost count. The bedroom my daughter has now was mama and daddy’s room. For several years it was more a hospital room than a bedroom. He spent the last years of his life in that room. He died there too. Some people might find it creepy.

I have walked by the bedroom door and glanced into that room and seen the lower half of the hospital bed, the blankets, and the outline of daddy’s legs and feet. It isn’t scary. I find myself closing my eyes really tight and hoping that when I open them it will all still be there.

Of course the room will be as it should be. Lauren’s walls are a pale whisper pink with white trim. She has lots of goth chick decor but she also has a large black and white photo of Audrey Hepburn over her bed.  It really is HER.  But I still feel him.

Of course mama is there in the memory mix too. The pale pink on the walls was for her. I also redid the kitchen for her. It was dark before but now the walls are a crisp spring green and the cabinets are stark white. The whole house (save for the upstairs that is still waiting on me) has changed.

I am grateful that Lauren has her "own" place and that she is so close by I can literally hear her if she yells for me. But I find myself standing in the house and my heart hurts. There is a physical ache right under my breast bone and without thought I will rest my hand there, almost patting like you would to calm a crying baby.

We were able to keep the phone number. I was so glad. Now it is in Lauren’s name but at least I can still dial that familiar number and reach "home".  I can still pick up a phone and dial both of my grandparent’s old numbers from memory. There is no one there that wants to speak to me though.  Oh how I wish there could be.

It makes me smile to think of picking up the old phone, the big black one with the rotary dial, and hear my grandmother’s voice or my PopPaw’s. It has been almost 25 years but I haven’t forgotten the sound of their voices. Daddy’s is still so fresh it is like he just walked into the other room.  I can still hear his "I love you too Curly" so clearly.

Whoever said "absence makes the heart grow fonder" was misinformed. Separation doesn’t make your love grow any deeper. It just makes a hole in your heart for the "missing them" to settle in and sink roots.