Daddy's Girl

What happens to a daddy’s girl when her daddy is gone was her only thought as she watched him.  He laid there silent in the bed while the machines around him beeped and made noises.  His larger than life stature did not come across in this hospital bed.  He was small and frail looking like the lightest touch could break him.  She had never seen him in this state before.  He had always been her rock, her source of strength.  She had been a daddy’s girl as long as she could remember and she was closer to him than anyone else.  She sat by his bed and held his hand.  The room was silent as she retreated into her head and her memories.  She saw herself at three sledding down a hill with him.  She could here the laughter and the fun that they were having.  Both their faces slightly pink but full of excitement and happiness of just spending the day together.  In that moment she remembered thinking that he was the greatest man on earth.  Time slipped by and she was nine.  She saw a lake and chairs and people with rods and reels.  It was a fishing tournament that she had been in at Holbrook pond.  The whole family was there but she could not see her mother or brother, just her and her daddy.  He cast the line out into the pond and handed it to her.  They sat down next to each other and he joked about feeding her to the alligators if she lost.  She watched as they played I spy and laughed and joked around.  Then she saw the ecstatic look on the little girls face as her rod bent and she jumped out of her chair.  She was squealing with excitement as she reeled in her first catch of the day.  Her father was just as excited as he used the net to get the fish and pull it out.  At that moment she remembered thinking he was the most wonderful father a girl could have.  Time passed quickly again and she was on a parade field.  There were hundreds of people and she was sitting with her family, all but her dad.    Across the parade field is a sea of brown camouflage and she can feel the excitement well up inside her when they start to march this way.  She is on her feet as she watches the young woman point to a man that bounces when he walks and says “there he is, right there, see him bounce there is my daddy.”    She just finished seventh grade but felt like a five year old on Christmas morning.  She had missed him and worried about him for six months while he was away fighting a war across the ocean and he was finally home.  The soldiers stop in the middle of the field and the families stand up and move off the bleachers.  A man on a loud speaker gives a speech but all the young woman can do is watch the man that bounced in the sea of brown.  She was bound and determined to find him when it was time.    Then all the sudden she heard it, “Soldiers find your families, Families find your soldiers.”  It was a mad rush of families reuniting with their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons but she never took her eyes off of him.  She reached him first and he swooped her up and hugged her with all his might.  They were both crying and talking and laughing and neither one realized there were others around.  Her mother and brother slammed into them and while he took one arm off of her to hug them he never let her go.  At that moment she felt like her daddy was the greatest man to walk the earth.  She was brought back to reality when she heard him moan.  He was laying there with is eyes closed in the still of the night in pain and there was nothing she could do for him.  Even now looking at him she knows that he is the greatest man in the universe.

         What happens to a daddy’s girl when her daddy is gone?  Where does she turn for strength?  She pondered these questions in the break of dawn sitting there by his side.  She had forever turned to him in times of joy and sorrow, and he had always been there.  Now she was there for him but dying to have him hold her and say everything will be fine.    She began to sing to him the songs that made her remember him best.  Songs that when she heard them she instantly thought of him.  Beatles songs flooded her mind along with the Beach boys.  Those were the songs of her childhood.  He always put records on when he was home and they would listen.  He had tons of records and even in times when he was away if she wanted to be close to him, she would play his records. She knew that these songs would never have the same meaning to her if he was gone.  They would bring sadness and hurt not happiness and love.  She held on to the hope that he would never want those songs to be lost to her so he would never leave her.  She knew that was childish thinking but in the presence of her daddy it was easy to be childish. 

         Her memory was racing again as anger filled her heart at the fact that he was lying there helplessly, so vulnerable.  She sunk into her memory and the past again remembering all the times that he let her down.  She was fifteen and there was a package in the mail.  It was from him and he was in Germany.  This was the first birthday of hers he had ever missed.  While the Army had dragged him all over the country and world and he had missed numerous of her mother and brothers birthdays, Christmas, Easters, and other important holidays, he had always managed to be there for her birthday.  This was the first time he was missing hers and she was sad, hurt and angry.  Yes, she celebrated with her friends and momma but her birthday was not complete without him there to share it with her.  It had been a hard year for all of them with him leaving to go to Germany, and the divorce but this topped it off for her.  She had always thought she was special and important to him and now she knew that she wasn’t.  Maybe she should have chosen to live with him and leave her friends, maybe that’s why he no longer treated her special, and she wasn’t sure.  At that moment she remembered thinking I hate this man.  Time past like lightning and she was seventeen and about to graduate high school.  Plans were being made all around her and she was taking senior pictures, going to prom, taking finals, and to top it all off she was gonna be walking across a stage and taking that diploma.  He had called a month before graduation to tell her that he wasn’t gonna be able to come to the states to see it cause he was being sent to Bosnia.  Her heart broke at the news but she said to herself, there is no way he would miss this for the world, he will find a way to be here.  The day came for graduation and he hadn’t come.  She had gotten a card from her step-mom with twenty dollars in it and that was it.  No phone call, no letter, no daddy she was heart broken.  She cried into her pillow for half an hour under the presumption of others that she was getting ready.  She wiped her tears and applied her make up and left to become a high school graduate.    As she walked across that stage she remembered thinking, this would mean so much more if he was here.  She sat and pondered all the special holidays, birthdays, and dances he had not been there for and she was saddened and angry.  She thought about the fact that he may never be around for any other special event and she felt guilty, lonely and scared.  Again one simple question crossed her mind.  What happens to a daddy’s girl when her daddy is gone forever?

         Daybreak has come and her brother with it to relieve her so she can go home and get some sleep and shower and eat.  She is not ready to leave his side, but knows that she needs to take care of herself in order to be able to be there for him.  She leans over his bed and brushes his hair away from his forehead.  As she kisses his forehead and tells him she loves him, her tears drop down from her cheek onto his face.  He squeezes her hand in acknowledgement that she had been with him all night.  She lays her head on his chest and breaks down sobbing.  She had been as strong as she could and could just not do it any longer.  She feels a hand on her back as her brother tries to comfort her but it’s not the same.  She longs for her father to reach up and pat her head like he used too.  Wipe the tears from her face and tell her that every thing will be fine.  Tell her she never had to worry about what a daddy’s girl does when her daddy is gone, because he would never leave her.  She pulls herself together and whispers in his ear “I love you daddy, I will be back soon.  You will be ok, and I will see you soon.”  She stands up and walks away knowing that he may not live through the day and those might be the last words he ever hears from his little girl.

         She gets in her car and starts to pull out of the space, she cries, she drives down the road and she cries.  She pulls into the drive way and she cries.  She cries for all the things she never said to him, she cries for some of the things she did.  She cries for all the things he will miss in her life and for how that makes her feel.  She wants him to be strong and live forever, to be there when the man of her dreams want to ask for her hand, to be there to walk her down the isle, to be there waiting for the birth of his first grandchild.  To be there to support her and love her and her family.  She wants him to grow old and grey and play with his grandchildren on the porch and tell them stories of his life.  She wants them to know this amazing man and have him mean as much to them as he does to her.  She cries for her future and for his.  She cries because she has to face this alone and she knows that she can’t.  She gets out of her truck, lights a cigarette , sits on the ground and cries.