Why His Remains……

So I have made several mentions of my father’s suicide. Mostly through poems/proses and just general ramblings. I haven’t really addressed the issue since it happened back in August. I don’t know why I have been hiding from it when it is so foremost in my mind. I can’t forget it, its there, haunting me, hovering in the air making it thick and difficult to breath. I get moody now a lot. The tears find me in songs I hear..words…pictures..movies..stories…real life events. I can’t escape it. His death wont go away. It relives itself daily when I walk into my bedroom and see the box. He rests in the same room I sleep in..”Burial Box” it says in big bold letters…screaming from the white cardboard it was printed on..you can’t miss it..and I dont.

I realize now why I brought his remains home with me instead of leaving them in Michigan with people he was surrounded by daily. He left when I was three.. I got a couple birthday cards…a few more phone calls..and a terrible 2 week visit when I was 15. He was drunk the whole time..made no effort to know me…everything was lies..when I confronted him..it hurt..that I didnt matter…Why the hell wasn’t I important enough for him to want to try harder? Why didn’t I matter? When I went to Michigan after it happened..after he killed himself..everyone knew who I was..they would whisper..”Oh my god..thats his daughter…the one from the pictures you know??..” They would just stop and stare..I could sense their curiosity…I could sense their pitty too. I didn’t know any of them. I didn’t even know him. The man in the pictures..with a smile so like mine..was a stranger. I knew his eyes though. Thats all I needed to know. His smiles seemed happy in the pictures..how could he be happy never knowing his only child?

I brought them home because everyone else knew him. Everyone else had the pleasure of having my father in their lives…everyone else….but what about me? I didn’t have him..I never had him…He was never mine to have. I think by taking them Its like a little girl having her daddy back. Even if he isn’t there physically…those remains are him..just in another form..morbid maybe.

Frank was telling me today how his father sent him a semi-sentimental e-mail..about how when Frank was little they’d drive all the way from Manhattan to PA to pick out a Christmas tree. How it brought a smile to his lips…good memories he said. He doesn’t know it..but my heart broke again…this seam..that has slowly been threaded shut..burst from the pressure of pain. I don’t have memories. I can’t look back and smile on my dad. Every memory I have of him is horrible. But no matter what I do the pain just wont go away. He wont go away. Why do I fucking hurt anyway? How can I hurt for a stranger? Why do I feel guilty? Should I have tried harder…should I have just accepted the drunk phone calls at 3 am? Should I have accepted that I didn’t come first?

Tina, his girlfriend said how proud of me he was when he got my graduation invitation. She asked how I liked the card and money…What money? What card? I never got either I told her. Apparently he never sent it…apparently he cashed the check she wrote…I wonder what he did with the card? How did he look at it after spending his daughters graduation money on booz or pot?

How did he climb that damn tree…or tie the knot in the rope..how did he jump after opening his wallet to my picture right there? How could he be so fucking proud of me and then just jump? No good byes..no letters..no phone call..no warning. How come it hurts? Why does it matter to me?? why why why….