A REFLECTION AFTER 9-11 . . .

9-11 has passed by again and, as most everyone else, I remember and I am sad to think of all the lives that were lost that day. I think also of the military personnel and civilians who died in the Afghani and Iraqi wars that followed. Fortunately many men and women who bravely fought in those wars have come home but not without myriad wounds. The pain and injuries go beyond what some might imagine. Every time I watch a reunion of families, particularly of a child with a parent, I am choked with emotion, and I know why. I understand that overwhelming sense of loss, so intense and powerful it is hard to articulate. Children are powerless in the face of such circumstances, and it is for that reason I cry, and for that reason I have written about my own experience. It was a long time ago, but I recall it as though it were yesterday.

THE MEMORY

For a ten-year-old girl, way back in 1958, life should have been filled with dolls, ballet, books, first bras, and the beginning dreams of boys. In my life, however, age ten presented me with my first experience of loss. It was the time that my dad said good-bye for eighteen months and more.

I knew he was leaving. I had heard the whispers and watched my mother’s intermittent tears, but I kept my distance from emotions I didn’t understand and was yet to endure. When I learned of his leaving, I became aloof. I watched. I listened, but I stifled my feelings. I can remember even scoffing at my mother when she cried. It somehow seemed so weak. Not until the morning of my dad’s departure did I allow myself to feel, and when I did, the sensation caught me by surprise and I was submerged in a sadness that has never fully disappeared.

As surely as it must, the day of his leaving arrived. My dad was going to Cambodia, Vietnam, places whose names I did not know then. I remember waking to a cool dawn. I heard the shuffle of bare feet in the hallway, the flush of a toilet, the running of water, and the familiar kitchen noises as my mom prepared breakfast. I lay in bed listening and breathing ever so lightly. In the stillness of my room, I begrudgingly allowed the early morning sounds to slip into my world. I finally pulled myself from bed and stood on the cold, hardwood floor of my bedroom preparing a cursory good-bye. I simply did not comprehend how incredibly ill prepared inwardly I was to let my dad go. I could not have imagined earlier the feeling I was soon to encounter.

At ten years old, I could be defiant. I could shield myself from emotion. I was strong, I knew. Even as I stared that morning into the dreary gray around me, I was certain I would not cry even though, as the minutes passed in my cold, shadowy room tightness was beginning to grow in my throat and chest. I stepped from the chilly floor onto a softly matted throw rug and reached for the light switch. Instant, yellow brightness brought details from the shadows. Everything became clear, including my pale blue eyes still weak with sleep. I stared at my reflection in the oversized mirror. My red curls were tousled in disarray. My pink, baby doll pajamas were wrinkled. One slightly sunburned and freckled shoulder protruded above the ruffled sleeve. I looked at the blue walls and the orderly, flowered wallpaper reflected behind my bed. I suddenly hated it.

A quick scurry of hasty movements and the soft scrape of a chair against the kitchen linoleum alerted me to the moment I had been avoiding. I grabbed my terrycloth robe and threw it on hurriedly. I opened the bedroom door and there in the hallway, attired smartly in his dress blues, was my father. He reached for me abruptly without a word and as if on cue, I began to cry. I held to him tightly, my arms clutched around his neck; my cries were mute against his chest. I could feel tears coating my face and my father’s pale, blue shirt became moist against my cheek. I don’t remember anything else except my crying as I awkwardly gripped him. My body was tight as though to gain strength from its rigidity. Finally my father’s arms moved from around me but I could not let him go.

“I have to go now,” he said. I could hear the quivering voice above me.

“No!” I cried, and looked with fear into his blue eyes. They too were wet. He hugged me once again and I sobbed some more.

I don’t recall how long we stood in the hallway with my mother and brother helplessly watching. It must have been several minutes. Without realizing how or when though, I found myself standing suddenly alone in the semi-dark hallway outside my bedroom door. I turned slowly into my room, fell into the wrinkled covers and cried some more. I don’t know how much time passed before I got up that day, but when I did, I looked sickeningly around my room and I knew it had to change. I spent the day scraping wallpaper from my wall and as I watched the ordered flowers drop in wet curls as I scraped and pulled, I cried.

When my mother, time after time, told the story about that day she simply said she had never seen anyone so obsessed with anything. Nor had she seen so many tears.

“You scraped and cried. You scraped and cried all day long,” she told me over the years.

I remember that. The next day, I painted my room lavender. I realize now it was a necessary change for me, one that I could control, one that could not hurt me as the greater change, the loss of my father had.

When my dad came home after eighteen months he was there very briefly before he was sent away again, this time for a year. That parting was tearless. When I was thirteen he was home to stay, but I had changed by then. Thirteen had brought boys, lipstick, and cheerleading yells. I was no longer Daddy’s little girl. I would never again be his little girl, for I would never let him in to hurt me again.

Now, years later, I look back at my dad differently. The bitterness is gone. He is no longer the ogre who left me crying in the hallway. He is my dad, and although I may never give him the chance to hug me again as he did when I was ten, I do love him. Age ten began years of pain, but the feelings of abandonment have been resolved. I still think of a potential hug in a hallway somewhere, but when I do, it brings an incredible feeling of panic. I’m afraid it would let loose the sorrow and another flow of tears. And there’s no wallpaper to come down.

Judith DeChesere-Boyle, 2013

 

My dad and me in 2010. He's 102 now, in 2013.