It took me 46 years to see my mother’s grief through the eyes of a mother.
For 46 years, I’ve carried the story of the little girl who lost her daddy.
Tonight, I found myself thinking about the young woman who lost her husband.
I feel as though I have spent most of my life trying to understand and overcome what losing my daddy at six years old meant.
Suddenly, 46 years later, I think I am beginning to understand what losing my daddy must have done to my mom.
She was a widow at 25. She lost her happily ever after.
My dad was only 26, and he left behind a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son.
Tonight, I found myself going through a box of memories from February 1980. Things I have held dearly for most of my life. Pictures of the accident, some of my dad’s childhood belongings, and little pieces of a life that ended far too soon.
While I’ve literally had a lifetime to look at these things, tonight, for the first time, I really looked at them. I saw them for what they were.
There were sympathy cards, flower cards, and letters of sympathy from friends and family.
Among those small acts of kindness was the warranty for my daddy’s casket. Even the information about where his burial vault was made.
It was almost as though those things had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Probably because whenever I opened that storage box, I was always drawn to the things I loved seeing. His Boy Scout uniform, his wallet full of baby pictures, and the newspaper article showing the wadded mess of metal left behind after his 1974 Ford Torino struck four trees at a high rate of speed.
His school pictures, report cards, handwritten letters, and the little pieces of his childhood that my grandparents had saved.
And then there were the Valentine’s cards.
My mother’s handwritten words, “The one you picked, not just came along.”
And my daddy’s simple message, written in his own handwriting.
“I love you. Ed.”
I remember that my daddy bought my mother Dan Fogelberg’s Phoenix on 8-track. He thought 8-tracks were cool. Man, would he wonder at the world today.
On that 8-track was a song called “Longer.”
It was a love song, given to a woman who had no idea how little time she had left with the man who bought it for her.
All of these things I’ve kept for years, but somehow, tonight I saw them differently.
Suddenly, I was no longer looking at the souvenirs of an event I wished I could forget.
I was no longer looking through the innocent eyes of a six-year-old girl who had just lost her daddy.
I was looking through the eyes of a mother.
And for the first time, I could truly see how strong my own mother had to be.
I was mesmerized by her strength.
I can appreciate her more in this moment because I know what it means to have children depending on you when the pain becomes absolutely unbearable and you’re hurting yourself.
You can’t collapse.
You just tell yourself, “It’s fine.”
And you keep going.
It made me think about how incredibly strong she had to be.
All the decisions that had to be made. All the people she had to notify. All the arrangements that had to be handled.
The uncertainty of what the future might bring, or what tomorrow would even look like.
And through all of that, somewhere in the middle of everything, she was supposed to find time to grieve her happily ever after.
She was only 25.
I spent 46 years trying to understand what losing my daddy did to me, never fully considering what losing him must have done to her.
And tonight, surrounded by all those little pieces of paper, I finally saw something I hadn’t seen before.
Now I know where I get my strength from.
Now I know why I’m damned and determined that I will not give up.
I was taught how to fight by a warrior.
She was only 25.
