Dark Mood

I had one of those moods last night. The ones that I've been getting less and less the last year or so, where I'm just hit with an overwhelming feeling of loss and sadness.

The first year or so after the accident, those feelings were a way of life, it was unusual to not feel that way, then gradually in the second year I started having more and more good days, this last year the bad days have become infrequent, mostly confined to February. Yet, last night, I just... I just felt so sad...

We were in the car and Erica put on the Blue Rodeo song "It Hasn't Hit Me", which was one of Daddy's favourites, one of his "Rick" songs, and a special song for my cousin--it's the one that reminds her the most of him. Usually listening to music my dad loved makes me feel melancoly, but it also makes me smile, feeling as if he's right there with me. Not so last night, last night I just felt sad and empty, it just reminded me that he's dead.

Suddenly, as I was listening to the song I was hit with the fact that I'm never going to see father again, never hear his voice or talk to him for hours. It's been over three years since I saw him and yet, sometimes the reality of his death still hits like a ton of bricks. Even now, I'm not ready for him to be gone.

I'm not saying that I'm normally okay with him being dead, I'm not, but I've more or less come to terms with it. I've figured out how to move on with my life and live every day, like I'd know he'd want me to. Most days, I can be happy, I can live my life without focusing on the fact that he's gone. I still feel sad times, but rarely like I did yesterday, which was just this bleak, over-whelming feeling of absolute despair. Not fun.

I guess, part of it is, I thought I had gotten past them--I thought I had gotten to a point where I only get those moods one month a year, during those 18 days that mark the passage between his birthday and the anniversary of his death. Yet, here in the beginning of May, I was hit with one. Maybe it was the song, or the fishing party last weekend, or the fact that in two weeks my parents would have celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary. Or maybe it's just the fact that I haven't had one of these days in a while, maybe I'm just due.

What I want to know is that does it ever go away? Will there be a time when I realize I haven't had one of those moods in a long time, not even in February? From what I've heard, it's doubtful. I'm told that it gets better, and it has been, but that it'll never get away. I'll never stop loving him, so I'll never stop missing him or grieving for him. It makes sense, but I guess part of me wishes that I could put all the pain behind me and close that dark, ugly period of my life. Yet, doing that would mean closing the door on Daddy and I don't want to do that. It's complicated, even in my own head.

Memories of February

Three years ago tomorrow, February 3rd, 2004, Eric Richards "Rick" McKague celebrated his 48th birthday. Actually, he celebrated two days earlier on Sunday, February 1st. Superbowl Sunday, because he was a HUGE football fanatic.

But, it was February 3rd that was his actual birthday. It was a low-key day, he spent the evening with his daughter and just stayed in and relaxed. Even his celebration on Sunday had been low-key, he had spent time with a few of his friends, watched the Superbowl and had cake and lasanga. All very simple, but fun.

Why is this important? Because 18 days later, on February 21st, 2004, Rick McKague would be killed in a car accident. That birthday would be the last he'd ever celebrate, the last occasion of any kind that he would ever celebrate.

As any who read this blog know, Rick McKague was my father. Tomorrow would be his 51st birthday and in three weeks, it'll be the third anniversary of his death. Naturally, because of those things, I've been thinking about him a lot these last few days and I probably will think about him more in the days to come.

I can't help but wonder how my parents and I would be celebrating tomorrow if my father was still alive. What would we be doing for his birthday? Most likely, we'd probably wait until Sunday to do anything, since if he could manange it, Daddy loved celebrating his birthday on Superbowl Sunday.

I'm going home this weekend, because it's also my grandfather's birthday--He'll be 97, how cool is that! Also, because I just can't not go home this weekend. I need to be in Castleton, with my mom and with my memories. But, of course, it won't be the same as it might have been. That hits me a lot, the idea of what might've been, if only...

I know that's a dangerous road to go down, but this time of year I can't help it. Too many memories associated with this month, both bitter and sweet...

Changed

February 21st, 2004, still haunts me, still influences decisions I make and how I react to things. No matter how far I come, I can't escape the consequences of that night or how it changed me forever.

Tonight, I had a hard time getting a hold of my mother and all I could think about was that night. It was replaying in my head in vivid technicolour, every little detail, and causing me to react to not being able to get a hold of Mom with full-out panic, instead of just a little bit of worry. After all, I was haunted by the memory of what happend to Daddy and how it all went down.

Most of the time, I'm okay. I've gotten past a lot of my issues about that night. The nightmares have faded, the constant panic about the people in my life, things like that. Yet, just when I start to think I've really moved past it and healed, I'm reminded that the wounds run deep and might never heal.

A friend called me paranoid and neurotic tonight because of how badly I reacted to the idea of not being able to get ahold of my mom and he might be right. However, once you live something like that, experiecne that kind of sudden loss, you can never forget. I'll never be the same as I was before February 21st, 2004, I'll always worry more than other people, always fear the worst, becasue I've lived it and I now know that night will never leave me. It'll always be there, in the back of mind, ready to come out and haunt me.

Maybe that's natural, maybe, no matter how hard we try or how far we come, we can never really escape the tragedies of our past. We can move on, we can reclaim our lives, but we'll never be the same as we were before and we'll always be affected, always react a little differently because we know how fickle fate can be.

After Grief

"You cannot die of grief, thought it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death."
- Stroke of Midnight by Laurell K. Hamilton, pg. 41

That passage really hit me the first time I read it and on subsequent readings, it still gets to me, because it's so true. In time, the pain lessens and your life continues and the day you realize this it's like another loss. When someone dies, your grief, your pain becomes a familiar companion, and when that goes, you have nothing.

It's been thirty-one months since the night my father died. Do I still grieve for him? Of course. Do I still miss him? Again, very much. But it's not the same as it once. It's not all-consuming. I don't think of him every moment, I don't cry over every little thing anymore. I still miss him, but my life isn't definied by that loss anymore.

The hardest thing to accept is that I've built a life that doesn't include my father. For the first little while, there was this gaping whole, and while there's still an empty spot, it's smaller. My life isn't the same as it was that day, its changed, I've changed.

I was 20 on the morning of February 21st, 2004, when I kissed my father goodbye for the last time. I was still trying to find myself and had no clue what my future held, what I wanted it to hold. I had a new job and was experiencing my first attempts at adulthood. I was still a child in many ways.

I'm 23 now. I'm a student, I have a clear plan for my life and I think I have the drive to see it through. I've been making adult decisions for a few years now and doing an okay job of it. I have my friends, I have a boyfriend, I have a pretty good life, but I'm not a child anymore (though I'm still occasionally childish).

Sometimes, I still let the grief take over, but not to the extent that I once did. I was guilty that first while of letting the grief control and define me, I don't think that's true anymore. My life is mine again, but its not an easy thing. It was almost easier when my life was about the loss of my father, instead of facing a life that just doesn't include him.

I'll always love him. I'll always miss him. A part of me will always hurt when I think about him and about everything I lost that day. I'll never think it wasn't a tragedy and a waste. But, day to day, I go on with my life and I will. I'm still alive and I still have a life to live and really that's waht my father would want, for me to be happy. But, in some way, it does feel like another loss, the realization that my life wasn't defined in that one moment and that you can love someone so much and hurt so badly when they die, but still move on.

Milestone

Tonight, I went through the box where we keep old cards and things. After the accident, I used to go through the sympathy cards on a regular basis, taking some sort of comfort from the messages of love and support from friends and family.

I hadn't gone through the box in a while, which in itself I'm sure is a good sign. Tonight, I found myself passing over the sympathy cards and focusing on birthday cards and christmas cards from other years. The sympathy cards are just a reminder of a bad time, for all the sweet messages, and I don't find myself lingering on that time as much anymore.

It's a good sign, I think. I'm letting go, I think and focusing on the good things and not the bad things. That was one moment in my life, one horrible, awful moment, but there were so many good times, so many happy memories and I should be remembering them, focusing on those mementoes.

Feeling Deprived

I was talking to a family member today about an upcoming party and I was just filled with a sense of resentment. I know it probably sounds stupid, but I couldn't help think it was unfair that other people got to throw milestone parties for their parents and I don't.

I'd had my parents 25th anniversary thought out for ages. I'd always intended to throw them a huge party. I'd wanted to do it for their 20th, but it wasn't a good time, so I decided to wait five years. Maybe there's a life lesson there. Maybe you shouldn't wait. Maybe you should just do it.

I never thought I'd never get the chance to throw them a big party, to celebrate with them. But then, I never thought my dad would die at 48, either...

48. Two years away from fifty. Another milestone we never reached together. Another party I never got to throw. If my dad had lived another two years, then we would have had a big party for him and I'd have that memory.

Maybe, that's what bothers me, instead of those happy memories to look back on now, all I have is the memory of what might have been. Not that I don't have lots of happy memories, but I don't have those memories.

I see my cousins getting to throw their parents these milestones parties and I guess, I just wonder why I don't get to do the same. Yes, my mom will turn 50 next year, but she's not as much the party type as my dad was. It won't be the same with her as it would have been with him.

I thought I had come to terms with everything I lost that night, but I guess not. I guess it still bothers me all the things that will never be. Maybe it's something I still need to work on.

So Close, Yet So Far Away

Tonight, I was at Jim and Anne's and we were watching an old video New Year's Eve 89/90 (making the one we have 90/91). It was neat too watch, but also painful.

Seeing my father like that... It was like he was right there, yet he was 16 years in the past. But the voice, the personality, even the appearance to an extent were like I remembered. There was even a shot of him sticking his metal teeth plate out, just liked he used to try and gross me out.

Just watching him be him, it made me miss him all the more. It was like having him back, yet it wasn't. I could see him, I could hear him, but it wasn't the same and in some ways it almost made it worse.

Seeing him just brought everything back, not that it wasn't there. But it was real, like he had just been there in the room. Instead, I lost him two years ago next Tuesday. Two of the hardest, most painful years of my life.

Still, though seeing him is still painful at this point, I also enjoy it, as odd as that might sound. It hurts, but at the same time... To see him again, to hear his voice, that's worth more than just about anything else in the world.

It's odd, this mixture of pleasure and pain. But then, most things in my life are that way now.

50

My father would have turned 50 today.

50, it's hard to even imagine. He would have been half a century old. I used to tease him about how close 50 was and he told me that age was just a number and that he didn't mind being numberically old, as long as he never got emotionally old.

Besides, he figured 50 would be a pretty good excuse for a party, so he intended to have a big one. It would have been a blast, but then most things concerning my father are.

It's hard to sit here on his birthday and know I won't see him, won't talk to him. It's his birthday, but he's not here. He'll never celebrate another year of life. He won't grow any older.

Every year, we did something as a family. Usually we had steak (Daddy's favourite) and all the trimmings and I made a cherry chip cake (agian, his favouite). Every year, it was always cherry chip, nothing else.

My father would spend some time with his father on his birthday, since they shared a birthday. My grandfather turns 96 today. And Daddy would definitly spend time with his friends, but his birthday was usually about the three of us. Lots of important things were.

I want so desperately to be baking that cherry chip cake I'll never bake again. I just want to believe that when I go home this afternoon, he'll be there and we'll celebrate his birthday, but we all know that's not true. He's not there and he never will be again.

But, he would have been 50.

Behind Blue Eyes

Behind Blue Eyes
The Who

No one knows what it´s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it´s like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren´t as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That´s never free

No one knows what it´s like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That´s never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

And if I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
And if I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it´s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

It's Starting Again...

It's not quite February yet, but already the nightmares are back. I had hoped they were gone for good, but the closer it gets to Februray, the more frequent they become...

The dreams are never exactly the same, but the basic premise is. They're always about the accident, in some way.

Sometimes, I simply relive that week in my dreams. Other times, I see it happening--the accident. I'm standing there helpless, watching as his car spins and spins before being hit by the other car.

Sometimes, it's not him in the car, but someone else. My mother, one of my friends, another family member. And I go through the same loss, the same terror that I felt that night, but worse--because it's another loss on top of the first one.

Or sometimes, he comes back to life and I get him back, only to lose him all over again. That happnes fairly frequently, I dream that I got him back, but then I lose him again.

Needless to say, I always wake up shaken. Sleep doesn't come easily, because I know what awaits me. And I know that the nightmares will just come more and more often the closer we get to the anniversary.

We have a month to go before then. It's been 23 months since the accident and yet, the nightmares are still frighteningly real and I still want him back. Maybe that's what makes the nightmares so hard, is that he's in most of them, if only briefly.

I see him, just like he was, and it's so real and then I lose him in my dreams and then I wake up to know that he was gone all along and that seeing him, even for a few brief, terrible moments was just an illusion.

It's not getting better, it's not getting easier. The pain is still there, fresh and brutal and raw. And I know that it'll all get worse the closer we get. Yay.

My Grandma

November 25th, 1988. The day I lost my maternal grandmother.

Ruth Meihm is the woman I think of as "Grandma", my father's mother died when I was 20 months old, so I don't remember her. But I do remember my mother's mother, my grandma.

She baby-sat me several times a week after school and I saw her most weekends as well, after all she only lived a block away from me. Because of that, we had a pretty close relationship and I adored my Grandma.

I remember helping her bake when I was a little girl. I love to bake and that's something I got from my grandmother (both of them actually) and it was something Grandma and I shared, one of those precious memories.

Every year on this date, I think about her, of course. So many years have passed, but the memories are still pretty clear and I still miss her. Not the way I miss my dad, she's been gone so many years and I was so young when she died that it can't be the same, but I still miss her a lot.

After all, she was my Grandma.

Turkey Day

Yesterday was American Thanksgiving. Turkey Day, my father always called it.

You see, despite us being Canadien, we always celebrated the American Holiday. Maybe, because it was a private family thing. THere was no extended family, just the three of us and whoever else we chose to invite.

Daddy'd take the day off work to watch football and I'd get to skip school. Mama would make a roast chicken and stuffing and all kinds of extras and we'd pick out on snack foods, anyway. I'd watch the parade with Daddy and a little bit of his football game.

It was one of my favourite times of the year. Just a special 'us' day and of course, yesterday I was thinking about him. As fate had it, I was in Castleton and my mom didn't have to work, so we spent it together. We even spot a roast chicken from the grocery store, it wasn't the same, but it was good.

I like the ideas of our old traditions going on without him, makes me miss him just a little less. THat way it feels as if he's still with us, sort of. We're still doing things he loved, things we used to do with him. It makes it better.

It's not the same, but it's enough.

I Listen to the Music

I Listen to the Music
By Michelle McKague

I listen the music,
That we used to listen to.
I read the books,
That once we read together.

I hear the lyrics of favourite songs,
And think of you.
I look at old photographs,
And my heart aches a little more.

There are echos of you all around me,
So many little things.
I stop and think of you all the time,
Everywhere I go I am remind of you.

Some times the pain seems never-ending,
And I wonder how to go on.
It feels like you took a part of me with you,
When you went away.

I can’t believe you’re in a better place,
Or that everything happens for a reason.
There’s no making sense of tragedy,
Of the loss I endured.

You were too young to go,
And I wasn’t ready yet to face life on my own.
I need you still,
I need you to guide me.

I always knew I’d lose you someday,
But I thought it would be years from now.
I had counted on years we’d never get,
Moments that we’ll never share.

I think of those moments,
When I listen to our special song.
With each lyric,
I think of the dance that’ll never be.

I listen to your favourite bands,
And it’s all so fresh in my mind.
The pain, the loss, the memories,
It’s all right there again.

You are gone,
But memories never die.
What you were lives on,
In all your favourite things.

So I turn the music up a little louder,
And remember.
It hurts a bit,
But it would hurt more to forget.

Music of His Heart

Lots of things make me think about my dad, it's just how it is. I think about him a hundred times a day, at least. But the biggest trigger is music.

So many songs have so many different memories attached. I hear them and I flash back to some moment, some conversation, some special occasion. Music brings it all back, because music was such a huge part of him. He loved it, couldn't bear the silence anymore than i can, and he just got so much pleasure, found some part of himself in it.

Carry on My Wayward Son by Kansas and Behind Blue Eyes by The Who, had special significance to him because he saw himself in the lyrics. Ruby Tuesday was his song for me. Love Her Madly was and his my mother's song.

He loved other songs and so many have special meaning. He used to go around singing It's Only Rock and Roll and when I was young, he'd constantly sing the lyrics of You Can't Always Get What You Want to me as some sort of parenting lesson.

He woudl constantly challenge me to idenitfy the song whenever we listend to the radio. He bought me classic rock CDs, as well as the CDs I wanted, to broaden my horizons. He was at his happiest, sitting in our living room or his basement, just listening to music and chilling with his friends.

So, it seems natural that it musics that makes me think of him the most. Music that makes me miss even more. And music that I turn to in the moments when the grief and the pain threaten to overwhelm me.

It's strange, as much pain as it causes me to hear the music that I once shared with my father, it also comforts me. When I'm at my lowest ebb and I listen to those familiar songs, it almost feels like he's there--or at least I can sense him better than I can other times.

Music was a big part of our bond. He gave me my life for it, everything I know, I learnt at my father's knee. SO many memories, so many special moments that music brings back and sometimes, I just need that connection. It's not the same, it could never be the same, but it's something.

So, I'll turn on the old familiar songs and take comfort in the memories of a time when I shared them with my father and the knowledge that somwhere he's hearing the same songs I am and sharing them with me once more, I just can't see him.

In Remembrance

In Remembrance
By Anonymous

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamonds glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle morning rain.
And when you wake in the morning's hush,
I am the sweet uplifting rush,
Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.

- This poem is also occasionally titled "I Am Not There".