Death Came Bearing Gifts

Is it the father who helps create the child or is that the daddy? Avoiding that question was always my specialty. Questions about my dad, where he was or how he fit into my life were nothing more than rhetorical to me. I gave up on him years after he had given up on us first.

Everyone who knew us knew that our relationship was not one to be tampered with, counseled, or even commented on. It just was. We didn't attempt to make any excuses or reasons for its condition.

It wasn't a relationship of expensive Hallmark Father's day cards and the proverbial cheap tie disguising itself as a carefully thought-out gift. The last time I'd purchased him a gift was for some holiday before I had any awareness of the difference between one holiday or another. Before I had any awareness of alcohol and the disease and fall out it could cause; how it would creep into the lives of unsuspecting family members, members who had no control over its superfluous invasion; family members who are barren of weapons in which to fight against it.

Ours was not one of teary-eyed graduation ceremonies. We never argued over my clothing, whether a dress was too tight, or not long enough, or revealed too much and left little for boys to imagine about.

Ours was not one the Father and Daughter love songs were inspired by. As much as deep down inside I always wished it would have been. Deep down inside the place I never let on existed, not to him, my mother, or anyone. The place I unknowingly stored all the anger I held inside for him over the years of being there, but not being there. The place where I hide all the jealousy and envy that I unsuccessfully fought off of the girls who would walk to school accompanied by their fathers. Or those who were dropped off in the family's nice car by daddy. Or the girls who came to school sporting their pink ruffled purses inscribed with "Daddy's Little Girl" on the front. The place where I took the need for his love and hid it underneath every lie of "I love you" that I so willing and ignorantly muttered to any little boy that would pay me even an iota of attention.

I wished our relationship inspired love songs. Butterfly Kisses, as I heard one love song call it, the love the artist had for his daughter. God I hated that damn song!
Instead, our relationship inspired The Best of Jerry Springer. Yet in the fall of 2002 all that didn't matter.

Throughout life Illness and Death are always

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