Nineteen Years

And The Places That Bring You Back

Same place, different time...

This isn’t the kind of story I usually tell here, but it lives underneath all the others.

Today marks 19 years since we lost my dad.

Nineteen. Which somehow feels impossible and also exactly right.

Last week, David and I were in Salzburg. The last time I was there (22 years ago), I was with Papa, Mom, and Alyx - when I was studying at the Mozarteum summer academy.

We walked through Mirabell Gardens. I found a photo of him there. I stood in the same spot and tried to recreate it. Same place, completely different life.

We wandered the streets, made our way up to the castle where we once heard a concert, and I kept thinking about those days - riding my bike along the river from our flat to rehearsals, to concerts, to everything that felt like the beginning of something.

It all came back in little flashes I hadn’t visited in years. Quiet, unexpected, and somehow exactly what I needed this time of year.

It felt like a small gift - to walk those same paths again, to feel him there in a way that was soft but unmistakable.

I wrote the piece below a few years after he passed. I’ve shared it before, but reading it now, I realize I still can’t say it better than this younger version of me did.

So I’m sharing it again (and again!).

I can’t believe I have now lived more than half of my life without you Papa. A weird realization, but at the same time knowing that memories are magic and somehow ours keep you alive in some alternate universe.

So…here goes.

I remember hearing the news and feeling completely stunned. I felt as though I left my own body behind, and was hovering slightly above myself, watching the scene unfold like some horrible movie.

I felt like I was going to be sick. I wanted to shout No! at the doctor. I really wanted to refuse to believe it was happening. I kept thinking, this shouldn’t be happening to us. It didn’t feel real.

Somehow, we stumbled through the first days. Completely raw. I wondered how it was possible to keep breathing and moving forward myself. It actually felt as though each breath I took was a victory. It felt amazing how the rest of the world could keep going forward: people rushing to work, the earth continued to circle…

Sitting through the services, organising what had to be organised. Not realizing in those moments, that there was some cottony cloud of shock that made it all feel unreal, as if to protect my heart from the actual pain. I did not realize how much worse it would feel once that too left.

I remember listening to people saying their well-meaning words, I know they meant well and truly wanted to comfort us. Things like, “He is in a better place now. It was God’s will. Be strong.” I basically learned that they are saying these words because they want to feel along side you, and they want to say something that makes you feel better, but they really don’t know what other words to say than that.

Because it hurts way too much to say the actual truth: this is terrible. this is horrible. I don’t know how you will survive this. How could this happen?

I remember walking to the beach with some friends after the funeral and for the first time standing at the waters edge and saying, “My dad is dead. Papa died.”

These words nudged me across the bridge from my old life, where Papa was there and alive, to my new life, where he no longer would be. I freaking hate this bridge, but there is just no way to turn back. This is the bridge we are on, and we have to walk across.

I tried to hold it together as much as I could, but I fell completely and utterly apart. My family fell completely and utterly apart, all the while moving forward.

I imagined the rest of my life, all the love and loss, and weddings and births, the vacations, and concerts, failures and successes, and just how damn bittersweet every event of my life would be because Papa would not be there.

Why me? Why us? I remember asking over and over again….the answer never really came. I decided it was because of the support system we had. Somehow, he had to go away, and somehow, we would survive.

I remember going for long walks. I would refuse to step on bugs, a worm, an ant. Because maybe there was someone back home waiting for them, some worm child, or ant wife, and I couldn’t bare the the thought of adding more grief in the world, even to the invertebrate world.

I was afraid to sleep, but at the same time longed for dreams. I might dream Papa alive again, and for just a sliver of a second, when I would wake up, between sleep and consciousness, I felt like he was still here. And then, the realization would come thundering down again.

I then started to notice, that despite all of the pain, that small scraps of beauty; a star, a sunrise, a sunset, the smiling and singing face of a stranger at a stoplight, the ocean…I let it wash over me, and started to feel that somehow I would be ok, we would be ok.

I discovered that there is a silent army. This army stretches across the world made of people who walked across the same bridge that I did, and my mom did, and my sister did, and my grandparents did, and my uncle and cousins did. I felt, for the first time in a very long time, that we were understood by these people. We were not alone. It is a sort of unspoken, but felt and supportive club. A club I wish on no one.

Approaching the first anniversary of his death. I felt it coming. It loomed over me like a portal taking me back to the day. You want to stop it from coming, because maybe if it doesn’t arrive, it never happened. But alas, you meet the day anyway.

I remember going down to the ocean, talking to Papa as if the ocean’s waves brought my words to him, I ate a slice of pizza, because we always stopped for pizza on the way home from Juilliard, just trying to feel as close to him as I could.

I remember going to sleep that night and thinking, ok, one year down, tomorrow wont hurt as much. Then waking up the next day, surprised that it still hurt just as much, surprised that we actually survived a whole year without him.

So, all you can do, is keep living and moving forward. Let time pour over you and do what nothing else can - soften the constant throb of the place Papa occupied. Let it push us across that shitty bridge. Let it show us what is still here - our love, our hearts, our family, our friends, our dreams, our talents, a future that is not necessarily the one we planned on, but the one that is, nonetheless, waiting for us.

I noticed that I hadn’t cried in a a few days, a few weeks. I felt grateful for the incredible strength of the human spirit, for the press on and on and on.

Do what Papa taught us to do (and of course Mom as well!)…Build something strong and beautiful because we are strong and beautiful. Whisper, I miss you. Smile at a stranger walking down the street, because maybe he is where you were a year ago.

I can now stand back and stare at the bridge we have somehow crossed. I was there, and there, and now here. I feel mostly accustomed to it now, not that it will ever go away. I feel strong, except on anniversaries, and some cold and rainy Tuesdays.

I feel like losing Papa has seasoned me, sharpened me, sweetened me, strengthened me. It has carved me into someone who is more wary, but also more awake. More essential.

I realize that each of us is stumbling across our own bridge. That this world is not for the faint-hearted, and it might not be the one we’d choose, but it is the world we are in.

I know that I have crossed this bridge and my life is so worth living and that Papa would be so proud of me, mom, and Alyx. I know that he is looking down on the strength that we have and smiling. He is proud of our accomplishments and the dreams we have made come true.

And even though we have learned to live with this pain on a daily basis, and have learned to carry on, there is not a day that goes by that my heart doesn’t feel the pang. I am not over my grief, and I never will be. However, I am grateful. I try to look at my grief as a gift because it has caused me to feel deep, raw emotions. And those feelings remind me that an aneurysm didn’t erase Papa from my memories. Yes, death fucking sucks, but through the memories and a whole lot of tears, Papa feels closer than ever.

He (and Mom too!) always told us to follow our dreams and our passions, even if it’s not easy. Fly as high as you can, because you can make a difference and do anything you put your mind to. He taught us to love unconditionally. I am so glad this is what I have been taught since the beginning. Today I will smile a little bit brighter, laugh a little bit louder, and remember…

This Part Wasn’t in the Score… but the music lives on