THIS IS US
A Midlife Reckoning With Childhood Trauma
When unprocessed grief rears its head
I am two months shy of my fifth birthday when my father dies. He has been ill throughout my childhood, his kidneys failing after a childhood illness ravaged them. He has been on dialysis as he’s awaited a new kidney, but he dies before one becomes available. He is 36.
He leaves behind my mother, his wife of 15 years; me and my almost-seven year old sister; his parents, whose loss of their only child is a blow from which they are too old and set in their ways to recover. He has been in and out of the hospital for years; I have no way to comprehend that his absence is any different from previous times he went away, even though the plaintive cries of my mother and grandmother scare me.
I’m sure I cry too, though that’s not what I recall now so much as the laughter. I am gleeful that I know the news before my sister, who had been asleep when my mother returned late at night from the hospital. Having information first as a younger sibling is precious, and this is big information, giving it gravitas. I win. I am fatherless now, but am triumphant nonetheless.
My mother remarries one year later, and one year after that her new husband adopts us. We are a complete family again; what’s done is done and…
