Posted on by shirindawna

forever.

my first father’s day without baba isn’t sad. it’s somehow uplifting. and full of possibility. and light. and hope.

it was an interesting week. i found myself in the emergency room, alone. and reached for my phone over and over again to call my dad. he was always my ‘go-to,’ my hero, my savior, my mentor…my dad, my baba. living without his physical presence has been an interesting ride. one that’s made me stronger. and somehow softer too.

my heart swelled today when someone i don’t know very well (but i’d like to šŸ˜‰ ) called to check on me and make sure i was doing okay. it’s little things that show a person’s character. and i’m thankful for all the characters in my life.

i’m fortunate that for 31.5 years i had the best baba i could’ve ever dreamt up (that’s saying A LOT, i have quite the imagination). and while my heart aches when i think about him not being able to walk me down the aisle when i get married or my children not getting to meet the man who made me into the person i am today – i am utterly grateful for the time i got to spend with him. baba’s death is a blow that i am still recovering from almost a year later. while visiting my dad at his final resting place today, i shed some (read: many) tears…and it was cleansing. coming up on a year of living without him is surreal.

itā€™s funny how it takes absence to focus the lens of eternity on a life. i can tell you that with every passing day that hindsight becomes clearer; the guy offering me the delicious tomatoes from his greenhouse as he toiled in the backyard and the man that made me cry by gushing over how proud he was of me at the most inopportune moments will always hold the most precious of places in my heart.

throughout this heartbreaking year, there were times when i felt so alone…i took to journaling how i felt to be able to process my emotions and thoughts. while my pain and feelings flowed onto the page, i found my words directed from my journal to my father. i was basically giving him an update on what was happening. letters to my dad.

my heart felt better after that. in some unexplainable way, i felt his presence. i think those moments taught me that while he isnā€™t physically on earth to help me deal with lifeā€™s ups and downs, his spirit is still here, watching over me.

it is thought that when we lose someone to death, we lose that person forever. but iā€™ve opened my mind to keep cultivating the relationship, even after death, because the people we love and who hold our hearts will always be with us.

if my dad taught me anything, it was: love is everything. it is such a powerful emotion. love doesnā€™t die when someone does; and vice-versa, our love for them doesnā€™t end just because they arenā€™t there physically. death ends a life, not a relationship.

my brother and i also grow closer, while also teaching each other about strength, family bonds and healing…sometimes, my brother and i remark, ā€œi wish daddy got to see this.ā€ we talk about how our dad would have been so happy to be with us on certain days. but we also knew that he IS happy and he IS there on those days… itā€™s something i feel now more than ever. by recognizing he is still with us no matter what, we learn to honor him. we honor his memory by living the happy lives we know he would have wanted for us. by keeping him in mind (and always in heart), i feel like he is looking out for us everyday.

even though i can’t feel him squeeze me as i walk through his front door, i feel him in my heart. and the truth is, proximity doesn’t indicate closeness.

happy dad’s day, baba.
i know you’re with me forever.

Posted on by shirindawna

lesser of two evils?

my dad died last year after a three year battle with cancer.

he bounced back from two major surgeries only to watch it come back. and ultimately, take over his body.

he died on a wednesday morning in a big bed less than an hour after i said my final goodbye to him. my brother was at his side.

i hear people discuss which is preferred: to lose a loved one unexpectedly, in a suddenly your life is very different moment…not giving you a chance to say goodbye. or i’m sorry. or i’ll be seeing you…

or is it less painful to watch your loved one slowly fade from this life to the next, often in pain, sometimes great pain, breaking your heart over and over? yes, it’s painful…but it’s a chance to say goodbye.

i’ve had that debate myself and i never come to any conclusive decision…what’s easier? which hurts less? i finally came to the conclusion that i had a little bit of both. i knew my dad had cancer for 3 years…and for 3 years, we managed it. he lived with it. we changed his diet. we changed his lifestyle. we bickered. we took a cruise. we debated. we had dance parties. we learned together. most of all, we loved.

3 years of fighting…and a miraculous recovery from a terribly invasive surgery only to find that 6 months later the cancer was back and stronger than ever before. the doctors all said the cancer was going to take his life. they suggested hospice. we thought they were wrong.

didn’t they know how strong my dad was?
didn’t they know how long we’d been fighting this battle already?
didn’t they know about how he was a miracle and nothing could beat him?

his decline was rapid (something that is bittersweet). within a couple months of this news, he was gone.

i can’t pretend i didn’t feel the balance of the universe shift as i watched my brother help change my dad’s diaper. or from helping lift him out of bed in his final days.

i could see him fading, but after 3 years i was still holding on to a modicum of hope that he would miraculously recover. leading up to the moment he took his last breath. even though we knew it was coming, it felt like he’d been taken in an instant, a tragedy unforeseen, unpredicted. and certainly, i was unprepared.

lesser of two evils? i can’t speak on that because i don’t believe there’s a good way to lose someone you love.

i do believe the time together changed us for the better. it made us more aware of each moment we have with the people in our lives.

my dad always saw the possibilities in every challenge. he was (overly) optimistic and valued love over all else. i see these traits in myself.

in the end, when cancer stripped my baba of his health, these ideals were something it could not take, something so strong that they outlived even him.

Posted on by shirindawna

dear peter.

mister pan,

i’ve always found your storyline amusing…but even as a little girl i was frustrated with your inability to grow up, leave neverland, and love wendy (and NOT like a mother).

as a (still little and arguably wiser) adult, i find your refusal of maturity downright irritating (albeit charming..and whimsical). you remind me of just about every guy i’ve ever dated. a discerning fact that is painfully obvious by my ex-boyfriend’s facebook posts (i’ve removed him from my feed at least 5 times. facebook, please stop changing your settings on a weekly basis). i try not to be judgmental, i really do…but if you’re over 30 and posting about getting wasted every weekend and acting like a frat boy, i don’t think you sound cool. i think you sound pathetic. and because i once dated you i start questioning my own judgement.

…but then i realize, i grew up. i outgrew you. you were a phase.

over it,
great white buffalo.

guys who don’t grow up can be fun…but they can’t (usually) be ‘the one.’

the ex loved a good time. but he seemed so lost and had never been serious about a career. he had several low-level jobs since i’d known him. life wass one big party. he was unreliable (and that’s putting it mildly). the only kind of follow-through he knew about involved his golf swing.

is it that difficult to achieve a healthy balance between work & play, seriousness & silliness?

don’t get me wrong, thereā€™s nothing wrong with having fun. no woman (that i know) wants to be with someone who is perpetually uptight. but when fun-loving & lighthearted cross over into unreliable & irresponsible, the teeter-totter lands on the ground with a painful thud. and the girlfriend is the one left with bruises (or depleted bank account, in this instance).

in the movie version of ā€˜peter pan,’ the iconic man-child tells his new lady friend, ā€œforget about them, wendy. forget them all, and come with me where youā€™ll never, never have to worry about grown-up things again.ā€

truth be told, despite the fact that she didn’t end up submitting to peter, wendy was too much of a pushover for me to identify with anyway. i much prefer tiger lily. she’s stubborn, she’s adventurous, she’s loyal, and she dances!

my advice: if a charming, fun-loving man-child says something like the above to you, think twice about becoming a resident of never-neverland. i will admit that (at the time) the departure of my ex was a devastating heartbreak, but looking back now all i think is ‘AMEN! there IS a reason for everything.’

it’s six years later and the aforementioned ex hasn’t grown up a bit…although i think he is beginning to grow out…of his hair. (smirk)

Posted on by shirindawna

feelings fade.

iā€™ve been deep down in the depths of a funk. i keep trying to pull myself out and somehow keep falling back in. at first, i tried to blame the weather, but itā€™s more than that…itā€™s heartbreak.

not over a boy (though i have had my fair share of those), i miss my dad. friends tell me my feelings are normal and itā€™s natural to feel this way, but i canā€™t help but feel guilty for being so sad recently. i know that loss is an inevitable part of the human experience and i am SO fortunate and grateful for everything i do have. which led me to thinking…about heartbreak in general. and my experiences with it.

supposedly, every woman wants a bad boy*, and iā€™ve certainly had my share. there was the dark haired blue eyed screw up in hawaii, the boy with tattoos instead of morals, the alcoholic who i watched deteriorate before my eyes, the chef who fought instead of cried, and the kid who womanized and then moved across the country.

i finally quit bad boys cold turkey after jb, the unemployed alcoholic with a great sense of humor and dreams of owning a bar. a few years ago, the two of us enjoyed a hilariously tumultuous time together, rehashing the in-and-outs of his suckjob career and pondering why life, mostly his, was little more than an enormous pile of elephant droppings. instead of a girlfriend, i became a backbone, a shrink, a cheerleader, a roommate. what really ended things was my dadā€™s diagnosis with cancer and the realization that i was wasting my time with someone with whom i couldnā€™t envision a future.

truthfully, i was a bit sorry to see him go. he drank. he bellyached. he spiraled downward. he left town.

and later, in the days after he moved, i would get calls from jb. since our split, heā€™d thought a lot about me. of course, i should ignore his calls…but he sounded so sincere that it left me wondering why bad was so hard to shake.

is it because we believe we can save these guys? or is that weā€™re still a bunch of cave women pining away for the beefy and strong? we want men who can defend us when necessary against spiders and catcalls and this mean olā€™ grizzly bear called life. but we also want someone who isnā€™t afraid to burrow down deep into the dirty muck of his own soul, to bring up the pain there and share it with that one special gal. in relationships, women want to feel together, to suffer and prevail as one. shared feelings equal intimacy. if thereā€™s anything bad boys seem to offer, itā€™s a well of steamy emotion.

and intensity. good guys may challenge our minds, but bad boys test our mettle. a significantly more erotic interplay.

but thereā€™s a fly in the ointment. these boys rarely heal. they just keep fighting, getting tattoos, puking up the bile of their own internal suffering and dribbling it into the lives of their worn-out girlfriends. bad boys donā€™t care about a womanā€™s personal crap because theyā€™re too busy continually stepping in their own.

a man who deals with his issues is hot. a man whoā€™s conscious of other peopleā€™s feelings is positively breath-taking. and a man who transcends the pain of his own life story? give this dude a medal.

i stood at that defining moment where i could either move toward emotional redemption and romantic health, or get sucked back into bad boy-ism and a life of needless distress. and then, i deleted his messages.

so, as i struggle to pull myself out of this deep well of sadness i remind myself that happiness is a choice…and although i canā€™t help but miss my dad ā€“ i can choose to remember him with a smile. and if the occasional tear slips its way out, then i choose to not feel badly about it. i just need a little time until the sad fades into the background.

*situations have been condensed & altered for anonymityā€™s sake

Posted on by shirindawna · 3 Comments

baba.

i have been racking my brain trying to think of the appropriate way to describe my dad, but no words or descriptions seem to do him justice.

he provided me with unconditional love, with protection, and the space to explore who i am and what i wanted to do with my life at my own pace.

he was truly my biggest fan.

my father was the most generous man i had ever met. besides the gift of unconditional love, he gave me the ultimate gift: confidence.

of all the gifts i have received, i have been most honored by this one. it is the greatest gift to ever give another person, to believe in them.

when i succeeded he stood back and took no credit, and when i failed he was by my side. what more could a child ask?

my baba taught me a lot, the most important thing being how to love. unconditionally.

he never missed an opportunity to tell me how much he loved me. in fact, every time we spoke or saw each other it was the first thing he said.

it feels nice to know that my baba and i didn’t leave a thing unsaid. we constantly told each other how lucky we were.

i was up late last night reading our old emails to each other and feeling comforted by the unabashed love in his messages.

my favorite one ended with: love is everything.

even though my dad and i said i love you probably every other sentence, i would give anything to hear him say it one more time.

in honor of my dad & this legacy of love, as you go about your day take the time to tell those who are important to you how much you love them and what they mean to you. and do it everyday, every chance you get. i can’t think of a better way to keep his memory alive.

…because i am sure he’s listening and because it was one of our favorite things to say to each other i’d like to borrow shakespeare’s words to remind my dad that i love him ‘dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty.’