“Mama, if you had three wishes what would they be?”
My seven-year-old asked this question apropos of nothing. At seven, she is still walking in the world of magical thinking. For her, there is always the possibility that when she makes a wish, no matter how outlandish, that it will come true.
“I don’t know, bug,” I said, “I have to think about that.”
Silence filled the air between us and I could feel her looking at me; hopeful and expectant, but for what?
“I know you would wish for Opa to be alive again.”
Opa. Her name for my dad. I looked at her, surprised and unsure what to say. I was expecting magical creatures. I was expecting her to suggest that I wish to be a pegasus. She took my hand as we crossed the street.
“That would be a really good wish for you, Mama, I know you really miss him.”
“I do, bug.” I said.
And it’s true. I do.
But it’s more complicated than that.
To wish him back to life would require that all of him return. It would wish back a painful complicated love and my love for him since his death has been uncomplicated. I’ve cried in the shower remembering—suddenly— the smell of the creativity bath gel he bought me for Christmas the year I turned 17. I’ve looked at pictures of him sun-kissed, young, and ambitious, with wonder. I’ve tenderly offered my children some of the shared rituals and jokes that my dad and I delighted in and loved their faces when they experience his unique magic, through me. With each act I have summoned my childhood and the very best of my father. I have spent the past eleven months loving the parts of him that were easy to love.
It has been sad, but also simple.
Wishing him back felt like violence.
The tenderness and magic would be rendered alongside the evictions and debts, the too young lovers and newest obsessions. The silliness and effervescence would be summoned alongside the threats of suicide and the murky in-between where his greatest dreams were born and sometimes turned into destructive delusions.
One of the strange and unexpected gifts of my dad’s passing has been that I no longer need to protect myself from his better angels in order to stave off the pain of his destructive and manic reinventions. In the months since his passing, I’ve looked at the wall I worked so hard to build between us and realized that there isn’t anyone standing on the other side of it anymore.
When he died, we had only seen each other once in the previous 5 years. By the last year of his life, I had placed him so far away and across that wall that I sometimes accidentally referred to him in the past tense.
I have felt closer to him in death than I did during the last years of his life.
I would not wish him back again.
But how do I explain that to a seven-year-old? When she asks me about him, she is thinking of herself; the two of us. When she asks me about that wish, what she is saying is:
Mama, I would wish you back again.
When she asks me about that wish she is wondering what it will be like to lose me.
How do I explain to her that my dad—her Opa—is different; that while I miss him deeply and he will always be with me in my heart, it is best that he stay gone.
What would I wish for with my three wishes?
I would wish for my children a love that doesn’t require walls to keep them safe.
I would wish for myself the courage to keep dismantling mine and the capacity to love the people in my life as they are in the present tense, while they are still with me.
And my dad…
I would not wish him back again.
I would wish him peace.
This took my breath away, Julia. Truly. What a gift of a mother you are - and a daughter, too.
Estrangement is so hard to explain to kids. 💔