Recentish
My father, Arnold Joseph Carvalho, died on October 5, 2016. It was one month before Trump became president and 3 months before I turned 21. He was 53 when he died and 33 when I was born. He once told me he had a distant uncle who died of suicide. His response was: “isn’t that the saddest thing you ever heard?”. I wonder if he knew he would die the same way.
His death was not a shock and that did not make it any less hard. Neither did the subsequent house foreclosure,
impending debt and
forced sale of his only inheritance:
a red 1996 Jeep Cherokee Sport.
He bought it on craigslist & I can’t remember how we sold it.
Suicide leaves more questions than answers.
Neither the dead or the living can respond.
The months that followed his death were marked by
mourning and
morning moments.
I had shame,
as most people in my shoes do.
Suicide implies choice (though the degree to which we will never know) and
I became plagued and paralyzed by its power.
As I opened my eyes each morning,
life felt weightless before the heaviness of grief set in.
I felt crazy for forgetting he was gone and
disappointed for remembering.
My loss was irretrievable and my choices magnified.
Should I get out of bed?
CAN I get out of bed? Should I go to class?
If I made it to the train stop, I would ask the pooping pigeons if I should turn back.
Routine motions were critical junctures.
Every choice was consequential
And lacked meaning.
I wonder if this is how he felt.
The adage states: “time heals all wounds”.
But fails to notice how grief changes time.
Much of life forecasts the future, and grief measures the past.
Six days drag on but six months slip by.
The 5th of each month rolled in like a tide and
hit like a tsunami.
The years after the firsts smelled solemn and looked solitary.
His death led my life and I wrestled it in different performances.
At times I was the heel, antagonistic and angry.
Other times I was the face, heroic and honorable.
I felt duty and desperation to transform tragedy into meaning.
I was deeply afraid that if I didn’t,
his “choice”
might have been
the right one.
I was grasping for peace outside of paralysis,
and leaving with clenched fists.
And yet, when I zoom out of these memories,
I see the people who were part of the performance. They were part actors and part audience. They were friends who couldn’t understand
but showed care anyway.
Friends whose houses I slept at so I didn’t have to be alone with my own thoughts.
Friends who sent flowers on deathaversaries.
Friends who asked me how I was really doing.
I had employers who let me call off work or come in to cry.
Professors who had lost loved ones and extended deadlines.
I will forever be a different person, because I was treated with care in my darkest moments. They allowed me the space to heal,
and the opportunity to not be further harmed.
It didn’t take away the hardness, but
allowed me to soften.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds.
Grief can be a scar you live with if you treat it as the laceration it is.
It will always be sensitive–sometimes painful and sometimes numb–but it can be proof that healing is an ongoing action, not a finished state.
I am 20 days away from my 30th birthday.
It falls on January 30th and thus is Golden.
I have been trying to learn what that means.
The Aztec word for Gold means divine excrement
and a reminder that beauty can be found in filth.
I never asked for this to be a part of my story, but I am clear now the roles that it plays.
I am proud that I have maintained a relationship with grief.
I am profoundly grateful for the people that made it possible to do so.
I no longer feel like it will be the main story of my life. I know better.
I know it will always be a part of it.
As I turn 30, this year marks 10 years from my dad’s death.
My 40s will mark equal time with and without him.
It will mark an equal time of my life living with grief and gratitude.