On a weathered log by the harbor, I sat with a grief I could not put into words. My life of late has held a tsunami of losses, yet it felt like I shouldn’t be sad in such a beautiful place. I now live in a town that, previously, I could only have dreamed of. Every day, I can smell the sea, hear seagulls from my window and walk to the ocean. Yet there it was. Persistent. Implacable.
With effort, I lingered, trying to define what I felt.
It was then that she appeared. Hand in hand with her father, she walked along the curve of the ocean in the depth of night. The six-year-old me was tidepooling with the part of her father that brought life, the Pied Piper. The one who knew how to play. The part that delighted in her. He taught her about the wonders of the ocean. The sea anemones in all their brilliant colors and how they gently stuck to your fingers and then folded-up. The ethereal ballerinas of the sea, called nudibranchs. The decorator crabs who borrowed shells, kelp, and all manner of odds and ends to live unseen. The walls of muscle shells beneath which, on extremely low tides, hung a rainbow of sea stars. Then, there was the wild beauty of the kelp. The bull whips, sea palms, sea lettuce, and most fun of all, “brown kelp,” the intertidal variety that clung to the rocks and popped when I stepped on them. On exceptionally magical nights, phosphorescence made the water glow like a thousand fireflies when we threw rocks in.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I bore witness to the younger part of myself and the father she misses.
I dearly loved the Pied Piper, and he loved me. For a moment, I was once again a little girl with him. I could hear the crunch of the stones beneath our feet and smell the fresh salty, kelpy air. I could hear the whoosh of the calmer waves that sent rocks skittering up shore and the thundering crash on stormy nights. These nights wove the wild, rugged Pacific ocean into my soul. I longed to go tidepooling with my father again, and it pierced me that it is unlikely that we ever will. As grief threatened to overwhelm, it struck me that I cannot even visit those sea gardens in remembrance, for the ocean I once knew and loved is no more.
With all that I am, I long for the Pied Piper to be the only face of my father. This longing wracked my body and it curled in grief because he is not my father’s only face.
The other face of my father, so unlike the Pied Piper, unfathomably fractured and wounded me, and it is he that has caused us to be estranged.
When memories returned of being a victim of child trafficking and extreme complex trauma (told elsewhere on Red Tent), my father refused to engage even a drop in an ocean of who he had been to me, or begin the process of becoming a safer person. His refusal was shattering, and after many attempts, I could not stay in his presence.
It’s now been five years since I have seen him. A time that feels like an eternity. I wonder how his face has changed. His gait. His voice. I wonder what occupies his days, how he has aged, and whether he is caring for himself.
So it is that I mourn the living. I grieve the father he could have been, and was for moments. I lament how he came to be the father he was. I wail for the father my heart has always needed but will never have. I weep that there is time yet for him to turn toward being this father, but he chooses not to do so. And, my heart sorrows for there is much I long to say to him that he is not able to hear.
Every day I see people who have achieved the status of silver hair, and my heart pangs with the loss of being with my parents in their golden years and having the gift, wisdom, and memory of elders in my life. Once again, I am robbed of what having parents ought to be.
On this path of loss, I long for a group of people who will sit on the weathered log with me. People in the containment of whose company I can let myself and the younger me wade into the full depth of our sorrow and weep. This too is part of my grief for I do not easily foresee that coming true. So it is me, the ocean, my pets, and my counselor. At least, for now.
Marín is on a long journey toward healing from complex trauma, and invites you to be a part of her archaeological pilgrimage through the truths she’s only beginning to know herself. Through tears she’s starting to find beauty again in life, writing, artistic expression, adventure, curiosity, community, spirituality, and bringing goodness to her body. More than anything, she treasures her time with her beloved four-footed friends, and friends that have become her family of choice. Marín cherishes being part of the Red Tent community and to be free her to share the rawness of her soul with you, she requests anonymity.
Thank you for sharing a fragment of your story.
I feel all of this in my bones this week. In the midst of an estrangement for the same reasons, an extended family member said he was frail and my longing for the kind fragment of him stabbed me. Thank you so much for languaging what feels unsayable. Holding it with you.
Dear t,
Your longing is good, and it’s agonizing that your father was not a man in whose life you could remain.
As heartbreaking as it is to say, our parents chose in our childhoods whether they would be the kind of people whose children could care for them in the final years, or not. Although I was raised that caring for elders in the golden years was a requirement, I have come to understand that it’s a privilege and sadly, not all parents have earned that privilege. A part of your father has to know why you’re not in his life.
Thank you for sharing. Thank you for articulating the complication. There are people who long to sit with you in your grief, in your missing, in all your emotions, and hold all your story. I hope you find them and they find you.