Happy Day After Father's Day

This has been a very painful weekend for me. I lost my boyfriend. No, he didn't die, just wrote me out of his life, which is worse in many ways. I can't come to grips with it somehow, and even though we've split many, many times - so many that it's a constant source of amusement for several well-meaning friends - this time I know it's forever. So bear with me, as I am very melancholy at the moment.

I also have been grappling with the first Father's Day without my dad. He died last October 12, and I have survived my first Christmas without him, my first birthday without him, his first birthday without him, etc. without totally losing my shit. But Father's Day has been different. I've somewhat lost my shit. Maybe it's the combined loss of Paul and the emptiness already in my heart from losing Dad, maybe it's just hearing and feeling the word 'father' all week, but something very heavy has crawled inside my heart and seems rather reluctant to leave.

I just posted a comment on another blog about my dad's love of country music. While it made me feel good about how much he gave me during his life, it also made me start to cry again. I just want to share a little of it here, for Dad.

My dad was from East Tennessee (always ‘east’, never just ‘Tennessee’) and loved country music. Now, when I say country music, I don’t mean this bullshit Hollywood crap they pass off as country now. I mean country and western old style - Loretta Lynn, Chet Atkins, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Flatt and Scruggs, Tammy Wynette. He had a wild streak, too, that mellowed once he married my mom and had us kids. But he was always a mischevious East Tennesseean at heart. I love country music, especially a good fiddle tune, thanks to him.

My parents were an odd match - mom very prim and proper and classically trained in piano, Dad a juvenile delinquent (in a good way, of course) from one of the best families of Knoxville, a family that since has been traced back to William the Conqueror, if you believe my aunts' geneaology searches. But they had an incredible relationship, the strength of which I only realized after Dad's death. They were soulmates, and having been together since they were 15, they knew each other better than anyone else. My mom is lost without him, something which surprises me as she always seemed so independent and cheerful, regardless of what happened around her. I am finding that I am somewhat lost without him, too, especially as I face divorce knowing that there is no one waiting for me on the other side.

I guess your father is your first love, and all others are based on him. I miss him terribly, and now realize that I will never have anyone love me as unconditionally and as deeply as he did. I have tried to find that love in many men since I left home to go to college and then on into the world as an adult. I see now that it can't be done. No one can take his place.



I apologize for the pity party. It has been a very black day.