The Walk and Talk

A couple of times a year Cindy has a busy season for two to three weeks, and she’s in the middle of the busiest right now, requiring her to go to the office seven days a week for 16-to-18-hour days. No one is happy about it, but I try to make lemons out of lemonade (or whatever) by cooking stuff for dinner she doesn’t like (lamb, scallops, etc.), listening to music she doesn’t care for really loudly, and now, my lunchtime walk around the neighborhood alone where I “converse” with Adrianna.

It's a walk and talk in typical Aaron Sorkin fashion, though there’s just one of us. I actually talk out loud, not in my head, and I don’t have to worry about looking like a lunatic: the iniquitousness of people conversing on their cellphones in public wearing earphones has brought one good result, I guess. No one gives me a second glance.

I walk as quickly as I can, trying to maintain a mile pace of under 16 minutes, just enough so it’s a bit labored to carry on my conversation. I do stop if I near a lawn service doing someone’s yard, a dog walker, or someone checking their mail, however.

I talk to Adri, pretending she can hear me, but knowing she can’t. I sometimes will try to call out some omnipotent being as well, asking Him or Her for some answers, also knowing that there is no Him or Her regardless of the capitalization of their pronoun. But I let myself pretend for the twenty minutes or so it takes to circumnavigate my route, anyway. I allow myself for a bit to imagine or hope that just maybe there is something else, somewhere else, even if it’s outside of our own time or space, where consciousnesses of our loved ones still exist. Still are. Still be.

Of course, I spend most of the time apologizing to her. I apologize for her having to grow up as a child of divorce, spending the better part of her life in two different places. I let her know how important she was to me, and how almost every single life decision I’ve made since she was a part of it was about her, and that this is exactly how I wanted it to be.

I apologize for not being able to either ease her life more or better prepare her for it herself. I tell her that I know she knows I tried, but I’m sorry none the less. I tell her I’m sorry if I did too much or too little, and that I was constantly trying to get that balancing act correct.

I apologize to her for not trying to force the issue more these last four years or so, and for making her work for everything and not making it easier for her sometimes when I could have. Instead, I’d keep the safety net I’d always provide in case of emergency unstated, unmentioned…  hoping that she’d figure stuff out for herself. Trying to make her 100% self-sufficient so she’d feel proud of her life and accomplishments and not feel so helpless or dependent on others.

I apologize to her that if instead this simply added more stress or made her feel like I didn’t care and that she was alone.

I remind her how I always used to tell her, “I saw you being born!” and how sorry I am that I couldn’t be with her when she died, holding her hand and trying to bring her some peace, letting her know she wasn’t alone.

I also tell her that I was always proud of her, for trying so hard and overcoming so many obstacles and never giving up when yet another roadblock or disaster came her way. I tell her that I hope she is at peace now, outside time and space, and let her know that she was and is loved, and that we will all make sure her boys thrive.

This is usually when I have my aside with who I’ll think of as “God.” I’ve let myself to have a conversation with my daughter who is no longer here, so why not that? I’ll allow myself that once a day or so, to buy into the whole Judeo-Christian concept of God. What’s it going to hurt?

So I tell this God to please take care of her, to please bathe her in light, please surround her with love.

And then I chastise this Being for taking out any sins of the father on the daughter, that no matter what I’ve done or haven’t done, I’ve tried to do what’s right even if I’ve failed sometimes, and that if they punished my daughter in order to punish me how dare they. Take any beefs that have with me out on me, not my daughter and her family.

Then I shake my head at my folly here for talking to some imaginary being, and then go back to talking to my daughter, like that’s different somehow.

I apologize again for not being able to offer up enough to ensure that she survived the challenges of her life, and tell her how much I miss her.

And that I love her.

And that I’m so, so, so, very sorry.