This Father’s Day marks the 10-year anniversary of the day the doctor delivered the news that my dad wouldn’t survive the injuries from his motorcycle accident. With words like “brain dead” and “unsurvivable,” my normal was hijacked. My mom and sister’s normal was hijacked. The woman who ran a stop sign had her normal hijacked, too. I sat down hoping to write something profound that would give meaning to honor 10 years, but so far, all I’ve done is finish one glass of red wine, three bowls of popcorn and the rest of the Moose Track ice cream I’ve managed to keep in the freezer for a week. It’s my way of circling around uncomfortable feelings, that even still, after all this time, I try to keep tucked neatly away, only to be pulled out during birthdays, Christmas and June 16th.
Even now, on paragraph two, I’m still not sure what this post is about or if it has any kind of takeaway or meaning. The words that are coming are just as unknown to me as they are to you. How do you try, for the tenth time, to tell the same story in a different way? I set out to write a post about grief and how winding and unending the path to healing is, but I think I’m still somewhere in the middle on that one. I also thought about writing a post about what’s happened in the years between the broken girl in the waiting room and the work-in-progress person that’s here now. I thought about writing about my mom and sister, two of the fiercest-loving, un-apologetically authentic women that I know and how I’ve watched them fight their way to that through layers and layers of grief. Lastly and mostly, I thought about telling you all about my dad. But I’ve already done that on every birthday and every June 16th for the past nine years.
The short version? My dad was a man who made me laugh and made me brave. He frustrated me with his curfews and pushed me with his expectations. He was inspired by his faith and humbled by his humanness. He wasn’t perfect, but he was a show-up, all-in, all-or-nothing, blood-and-guts, here-and-now kind of guy, and as it turns out, those are my very favorite kinds of people. He was good at loving people. An includer. An inviter. An “I’m sorry, let’s try again” person. He is so much of who I hope to be one day.
I have stories. Many of you reading this have stories. Some of these stories would be about keg parties and addiction and some of these stories would be about faith and redemption. I imagine most of these stories likely fall somewhere in the middle.
And maybe that’s what this post is about. The middle. The in-between. The space between what if? and what now?. I’ve been waiting—no I’ve been working—to get to the other side of this thing for 10 years. Doing the heavy lifting and putting check marks next to the five stages of grief and still, even now, it doesn’t take much to unravel me back to the very afraid girl I was years ago. So in the middle is where I live my life these days.
And that’s what I think my dad would want me to tell you today. That it’s in the in-between where our lives are meant to be lived. Not in the should haves and could haves and not in the what ifs and whens, but the here and nows. He’d tell me to show up. To bring my whole, messy, broken, grieving self and show up for the in-between. He’d tell me that halfway is far enough for today and further along than I was yesterday.
I’ve learned so much in this in-the-middle, not-quite-there space. I’ve learned that you don’t have to wait until you’re all the way healed to move forward and you don’t have to have it all together for God to put it all back together. I’ve learned that though grief feels like a homeless love with no place to go, that love always has a place to go. I’ve learned that celebration and sorrow can co-exist and that sometimes, one can’t exist fully without the other. I’ve also come to learn that throughout the course of my life, I’ve been ducking and avoiding and escaping, hoping to get to the end of this thing with the least possible number of bruises, detours and setbacks. But now I know, today I know, that I want to get to heaven beat up and battered with a collection of scars that prove I showed up for my life. I know without a doubt that my dad, with his calloused hands and crow’s feet, arrived at heaven’s gates in that very same way.
And maybe that’s what this post is about. It’s one part a tribute to the man who taught me an awful lot about the magic in the middle. And it’s one part a reminder to you, a reminder to me, that there’s an entire life that’s waiting here in the middle for you. It’s waiting for you now; not as soon as or when this or that happens for you. It’s ready for you here and now. As you are. Where you are. When you are.