Letters to Charlie: Oops, I'm Debilitatingly Sad

27 December 2019

Dear Papa,

I should be behind a cash register right now, ringing up $14 dresses and $9 earrings. Instead, I’m sitting at my computer, in my office, trying to divert emotions from my tear ducts into my fingertips.

I left during the first half of my shift. I thought I would be OK enough to work today, and for the first hour I still believed I was. Then the second and third hours rushed by in a flurry of sweatshirts and barcodes and “how are you?”s that made me want to jump out of my skin as I responded in excruciating, customer-service-approved falsities.

I could have stayed. I probably should have stayed. And as I painstakingly remind myself every few minutes, I’m pretty sure you would have stayed, if it were you. But it’s me. So I came home.

You died two days ago, December 25, 2019. You died on Christmas. In the 42 hours since, I’ve pressed on with an energy and attitude I’m proud of. I fulfilled the day’s pre-ordained social obligations with more enthusiasm than I expected to produce and focused the rest of the day on our family’s shared grief around losing you and everything that means. I went to bed early last night and woke early this morning to get back home in time for work. 

“I’m really OK,” I told everyone. And I believed it.

I blew through the 4.5-hour drive with a riveting true crime podcast and got home just in time to shower and put together a reasonably cute outfit and grab something to take for lunch and get to work at exactly 11:00 AM. My manager took me to the count room, set me up with my register drawer to count in, and closed the door behind himself when he left.

The sounds of a building post-Christmas shopping crowd and some Black Eyed Peas song were barely audible through two doors. I counted my money, wrote down the totals of each bill and coin denomination, and stopped before adding them up. I was alone in a quiet space with just my thoughts for the first time since you died. And it all came over me right then, and it came down onto my count slip in fat splashy tears and out to you and whoever’s listening in a prayer I didn’t know how to say.

So I guess now I’m in it. For days leading up to it -- the days when I knew your death was imminent -- I held myself above it, using gratitude and bittersweet joy and catharsis and family bonding and selflessness to stay afloat. But as time started moving me further from your last labored breath, I felt the weight of each second you’re not here pressing until I couldn’t resist it anymore.

In her book Trick Mirror, my favorite of 2019 (I’m making an out-there assumption that they have books where you are?), Jia Tolentino says that, and I’m paraphrasing, she turns to writing when she needs to better understand how she feels or thinks about something. That resonated with me. 

You loved my writing and unceasingly pushed me to do more of it, a form of loving support I hate to admit annoyed me until I knew you were dying. Why did you have to pester me so much? I would think. Didn’t you know I’d get around to it when I got around to it? Turns out, you knew some things I didn’t about that “one day” mentality.

So this is me, wet-faced and blurry-eyed, writing you a letter your human eyes will never read. This is me letting myself sink below the surface of my grief. 

Always always,

Turtlebug