Day 336

Today is a doubly bad day for Mom. Not only does it mark 10 months since Dad died. It is her first Valentine’s day in nearly 50 years without him. 

Ten months! I can’t believe he has been gone that long. It still feels so unreal. I’ve been watching WandaVision with my son. A few months back I promised him I’d watch all things Marvel with him. Marvel movies had been something he and Dad shared — oh how they both loved their boys outings. Not having his movie buddy was only one of many voids Dad’s absence has left in my son’s life. I knew I could never replace Dad, but I could try to fill that void, even a little. When I started watching the movies with him, I expected it to be painful. I’ve never been interested in superhero movies, but by the third Iron Man, or maybe it was the second Thor, I had to admit the movies had begun to suck me in. It was no longer, I’m doing this for Dad. It was more like, Oh, what can we watch next? So when we heard about WandaVision, I was just as excited as my son to see it. The first episode disappointed me. At first I liked the fact that it was a spoof on TV from the 50s, but the harder I tried to see how it fit in the Marvel Movie universe the more puzzled I became. The second episode puzzled me more. But by the end of episode three I was captivated. The idea — spoiler here, so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want me to ruin it skip to the next paragraph — of Wanda creating an alternate world to bring back first her dead boyfriend and then her dead brother is crazy. Something I never would have bought into in my pre-Marvel obsessed life. But watching it on the heels of Dad’s death has been very unsettling. For several nights now, I’ve been unable to sleep. I doze for awhile but end up having bizarre dreams. I don’t remember the details, only shadows, images of Dad and trying to reach him but not being able to. I wake feeling horribly sad and lonely. Then I lay in bed unable to fall back to sleep, and when my alarm goes off I struggle to find the strength and motivation to get up.

Every year on Valentine’s Dad — or on the weekend preceding it — Dad took Mom out to dinner. They would often go to the Porto Bello Restaurant out on Long Island, one of their favorites. Today my son said, “We should take Nona out for dinner.” Yes, we should, but due to Covid I’m out of work. I can’t take someone out to eat with no money. Plus, Covid. We can’t go out to eat when doing so isn’t safe. But at least the weather cooperated today and allowed me to drive across state lines so that she didn’t have to be alone.

After picking up Mom in Queens, we drove Mattituck. Mom has been worried about the house. Between us moving and all the snow we’ve gotten, I haven’t been able to get out here sooner. But it’s a bittersweet visit. Mom has decided she is definitely selling the house. She feels awful about it. Dad loved this house and it’s full of so many wonderful memories. But she doesn’t drive, and as she told a neighbor, “I can’t rely on my daughter to bring meout here all the time.” Damn that hurt. I’ve tried to be extremely reliable. But I can’t drop everything all the time. And once my son is back in school, and his extracurricular activities pick up, getting out here monthly would become more of a challenge. Tomorrow, I’m taking mom to Home Depot to buy boxes and packing tape so she can start packing up the house. 

Before reading with my son tonight, he asked me to mark his height on the door frame. He’s grown quite a bit this year — two inches since the early part of the summer. As we were studying the marks, I pointed out the last time he and Dad were here together. Out of curiosity, I measured the distance between then and now — three inches exactly. He has grown three inches since November 2019. Three inches since they both sat at this table together. Three inches since they cuddled in the reclining chair together. “Oh no,” my son said, looking directly at me. “You’re not going to cry are you?” Too late. I was already crying. Those three inches mark so much absence, so much loss, so much that Dad has missed. But I know my son still thinks about him because this morning he told me, “Grandpa’s ghost always kisses me goodnight.”