I Didn't Expect to Outlive My Father |
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I am one day older than my father was, than he ever got to be. I was ten years old when I grew up, ‘cause he died at 53…
These words begin Sara Bareilles’ new song, “Home,” which she debuted last month on Anderson Cooper’s award-winning grief podcast, “All There Is.” Bareilles was deeply moved after listening to an earlier season’s conversation in which Cooper and Stephen Colbert commiserated about unexpectedly outliving their fathers. Bareilles began to think anew about her own recent losses and the idea that telling your story “warts and all” becomes a path to connection with others and returns you to yourself. She joked that the song is “pretty much plagiarism” from that conversation because it includes pieces of both men’s stories. Her lyrics are vulnerable and intimate, and even though the opening line is about Colbert’s father, I felt she could be singing about mine. And the speaker of those words could be me.
Last month marked my fifty-fourth birthday, and I am now a year older than my father was when he died, a milestone I never thought I’d reach. With characteristic humor, my older brother texted: Welcome to the “I’ve now outlived my father” club. Every day going forward is a gift. I’m the third of my four siblings inducted, and since gaining my membership, disorienting questions have rolled around in my head. How can we possibly have outlived Dad? What does it even mean? If you are older than your parent, are they still your parent? I keep trying to puzzle answers, but the pieces don’t fit.
When my daughter turned 23 in January, my age when Dad died, I had a similar feeling. I could see remnants of the baby, the toddler, the girl, the teenager she once was, but I couldn’t imagine the woman she is carrying the loss I did. Because it had happened to me, though, I’d expected something equally painful for her.
Talking with Cooper, Colbert expressed a parallel expectation, convinced he’d die when his kids turned ten because he couldn’t conceptualize a child older than ten with a father. “I would do that horrible math all the time. I did it with all of the kids…Seriously, every day I did a countdown.”
This kind of “magical thinking,” fabricated prophecies that measure our fates according to the memories looming large in our minds, is not uncommon in people who’ve lost someone prematurely. The script written for us feels destined to replay for those we love most. We live with an unspoken, onging conviction of limited shelf life. Psychologists call it: “a sense of foreshortened future.”
When my father contracted HIV from contaminated blood during open heart surgery in 1985, the ground once solid beneath my 13-year-old feet collapsed. Despite the overwhelming uncertainty of his disease, the one certainty was that Dad would die. For ten years before his 1995 death, I braced for a devastating, inevitable, and uncontrollable outcome. No one ever would suspect me of being a Debbie Downer, but that decade built the scaffolding for my insistent internal practice of anticipating the worst, my distorted way of reclaiming agency. If I rehearsed the tragedy, somehow, I’d be safe. Why sabotage things by looking for a silver lining? There’s a looping reel of potential catastrophes to watch instead.
“Where do you see us in five years? In ten years?” My husband would sometimes ask early in our marriage, inviting me to dream of possibilities beyond our academic pressures and student debt. The question freaked me out.
“I don’t,” I’d say, changing the subject. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to imagine our future, but conjuring the images of careers, a house, and children felt dangerous, like flirting with that disaster always in the wings, waiting for its cue. Eventually, as he adjusted to my mindset, Chris stopped asking and quietly dreamed for both of us. When careers, house, and children arrived disaster-free, I credited my own diligent work of not dreaming. I kept up the habit and never got too comfortable with imagining the good because, like Colbert, I had my own “horrible math.”
“What has that done for you?” my therapist asks often as we persevere in unpacking my considerable baggage.
“Protected me,” I answer, trying to wrangle the skewed logic and sound confident.
“But has it really? Life happens either way. Will it be any easier to cope if you get sick or Chris gets sick or something happens to Will or Lily just because you anticipated it?”
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“Maybe?” I won’t let him win by giving in to his rational thinking, but I accidentally add the question mark and betray my doubt.
“Maybe not,” he says gently.
Of course he’s right. Not dreaming hasn’t stopped life from moving forward. Setting a ceiling for mine according to my father’s didn’t stop me from outliving him either. His trajectory is halted behind me. And disoriented or not, I’m still here.
In “Home,” Bareilles offers a poignant reflection. I see it now but didn’t then, that silence is a thief. By silencing my grief and habitualizing its fatalistic repercussions, I’ve muted my joy. My father would never have wanted to rob me of hope. As I step into the uncharted territory of my fifty-fifth year, maybe it’s time to loosen my grip on the ill-fitting puzzle pieces. And to be asking, “What now?”
The answer started writing itself during my birthday celebrations. In an epic surprise, Will flew from Toronto to New Hampshire for the weekend. On Sunday morning, he and Lily and Chris and I chatted easily over coffee and tea. With Lily gearing up to begin a Doctor of Physical Therapy program and Will nearing his first year post master’s degree, the conversation invariably turned to the future.
“Where do you see yourselves in five years?” Chris asked.
I felt the familiar, nagging dread constricting me, but this time, I fought it. I bit my lip to keep from redirecting the discussion. Will talked about his plans to stay in Toronto, continuing his work as a strength and conditioning coach and heading a high school baseball program. After that, “Maybe finding a job with a professional sports team or coming back to New England and eventually opening my own training facility.”
Lily’s blueprint was even more defined. “I’ll finish my degree in three years, and then I’ll work at a Boston hospital for at least five years, and then, if I’m ready to start a family, I’ll think about working in a private clinic.”
The kids ping-ponged more possibilities, Chris interjecting questions.
For once, I didn’t sweep my mental eraser over the outlines forming in my imagination. I took a deep breath, leaned forward in my chair, really listened, and let the pictures of their futures take shape.
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