Memoir

My First Love Left Me: In The Middle of the Night, He Was Gone.

Ah, Shaddup you face.

Chiquitita, tell me what’s wrong You’re enchained by your own sorrow In your eyes there is no hope for tomorrow How I hate to see you like this There is no way you can deny it I can see that you’re oh so sad, so quiet…. (—Björn Ulvaeus & Benny Andersson)

My first love had dark blonde hair that would streak with the summer sun, grey eyes, and a big smoky laugh.

He was the kind of guy everyone loved. Everyone seemed to want to be around him. Everyone laughed when he told stories. People seemed to be drawn to his unique charm. Boyish and naughty — like an altar boy trying to get a peek at a teenage girl’s panties after class.

My first love was giving. And nurturing. And warm.

He was the kind of guy whose eyes twinkled when he smiled. He loved music. He was over-the-top animated when he told a story. Some might say he had a knack for exaggeration. I like to call it dramatic flair.

My first love left me.

I wasn’t prepared for that kind of heartache.

I was not prepared for the turmoil it would put my emotions through.

You know when you are a bit of an odd duck yet there is someone out there who is just like you and you know they get it? And they like the same things, and they laugh the same way and they tell stories with the same dramatic flair? (Even if some may call it a “knack for exaggeration?”)

It was that. It was all that and more.

I am what some in my life have hurtfully labeled, “an ice queen.”

I guess there are those who believe I am devoid of emotion. It isn’t that I am devoid of emotion. It is that I am so overwhelmed by the amount of emotion I feel, that without the walls I built very early in my childhood I would have imploded long ago.

He was that way too.

The feelings of others could also cripple him, even though he didn’t like to let on to that. But I understood. Like me, he was:

Gregarious but painfully introverted. Confident but insecure. Creative but realistic. Hopeful but doubtful. Happy but sad.

The one difference, the one difference, and perhaps this has to do with gender is that he was never labeled as “icy.”

He was labeled as a drunk.

I am one of four.

It was two.

Then it was four.

The summer before I started 4th grade, my mother called my brother and me into her room. I hopped into the bed, eager to play a game of Pong on my mom and dad’s tiny television. My brother Jason meandered in, flopping into mom’s lap.

“So, we are going to be moving to a new house!”

I heard the words, but I was concentrating on the super exciting Pong game. We’d moved before. Whatever.

“It’s a pretty red building. I like it…”

Jason sucked his thumb loudly.

“OK.”

“Do you have any questions? Do you want to go see it?”

“Well, Daddy’s coming, right?”

“I want to talk to you about that…”

She wanted to talk to me about that. And she did. I was a fairly bright child. Too bright. So much so that it made me awkward in a way that my peers didn’t understand, in a way that I masked generously.

I already knew that my mother was sleeping in the spare room because of her bad back. I already knew that my mother wasn’t coming home on time from nursing school. I already knew that she was spending too much time with her friend Ron. I would wait for her to come home with my dad.

Now. Before y’all go casting judgment on her — think about this. I was 8 years old and my dad was telling me that she was out with her “special friend” and having me wait by the stairs for her to come home so when she opened the door, I’d be there. He was not innocent in this game, and who the hell knows what the real truth was. But this isn’t about that.

The point is, that Saturday morning as I played pong, my mother told me in the best way she could that she was leaving my dad.

I don’t care who you are, or what the circumstances may be, that’s not an easy discussion to have with your children. Period.

I was one of four.

I was the lucky one. I got the dad who was playful and attentive. He’d take me to the dump and to his grocery store where I’d take penny candies from his candy cart. He’d bring me along on errands. I was his little buddy. He would do this thing where he’d rub noses with me and say “pizia, pizia” — I’ve no idea if it ever had any meaning, but he’d say it. He was warm and funny. He introduced me to music. Together we would listen to Simon & Garfunkel and The Beatles, Sha Na Na and ABBA. I would put on his giant headphones and listen to his record albums for hours on end.

When they split up…oh, I had a hard time. I had a very hard time. I became a different, closed up girl. I cried. A lot.

I cried a lot for him.

I sobbed a lot for him.

I felt like the only person who understood me in the world was gone.

He had two songs he’d play to make me smile and laugh when he knew I was sad. Ironically, they would make me bust out in tears — but, I suppose, happy tears. Sobs. And they still do. Even though one of them is roughly kind of…not super politically correct.

He would play Chiquitita by ABBA and Shaddup You Face by Joe Dolce.

And still today, if I’m sad…either can make me sob then relax.

I am one of four.

I am much older than the others. They did not get the best of my father. My brother is five years younger. He was three when my parents separated. My half-sisters are 13 and 17 years younger than I. Unfortunately, they experienced my dad when his alcoholism had taken over. I never knew that dad. He drank hard. But back then — as ignorant and horrible as this sounds — it hadn’t yet made him…difficult. Or horribly impaired. Or not able to function. It made him social and funny and witty and charming. And that’s the joke of it, really. That’s the sad truth of it, really. The evil reality of alcoholism.

I was one of four.

We all loved him and rued him in our own ways.

I fell out of love with my dad when I was a teenager.

Between my teen years until into my 40s I had a big fat ugly chip on my shoulder. But not for the same reason as my siblings. They saw the darkest side of him that I couldn’t comprehend. Just as I saw the lightest side of him they could never comprehend.

And I also felt guilty not being there as a good daughter. I knew he wasn’t the most healthy. I knew he was alone. My biggest fear was always, always that he would die scared and alone. All four of us scattered and just ignoring him like usual.

My issue came down to female arrogance. Oh, he’s being ignorant and small town-minded, and all he can do is lecture me when he doesn’t even know me…and what I didn’t understand due to my immaturity was that he was trying. It took my own parenting fails to finally get that.

And yeah. He could be needy. And me…well…I can be…not easy.

I’m not easy. I don’t want to say the ice queen label is accurate. But the walls, yes, the walls are reality. My walls are how I survive.

Even still, once I learned to let go, my Dad became one of my biggest champions. And because we were so much alike, he was so easy to lean on for a variety of things; he approached issues so much like I did, approached people and problems with a thinking so much like me. I don’t think anyone even understands that. Having my Dad to turn to in my 40s through some tough times is something I’ll always be thankful for.

It happened one February.

And I was one of four. One of four to receive the phone call.

My dad died.

Scared and alone.

We received the call on February 13, 2015. Dad had woken up in the middle of the night, walked down the hall toward the bathroom, and fell face-first onto the carpet when his heart gave out at 69. The coroner attributed his death to smoking, COPD, and his heart. But the alcohol was at play too. It was his family once we were all gone.

I was one of four.

We all met at my Dad’s apartment and went through his things. We laughed. Remembered. Played his records. Played with his accordion. Looked through photos. And I put a playlist together of all his favorite music to play at the American Legion reception with all his friends. It was exactly what he would have loved. We rented a huge home on Lake Flower in Saranac Lake where our entire family stayed and canoed and BBQd and celebrated his life. And it was exactly what he would have loved. The guards played TAPS, which echoed throughout downtown, following his funeral — which is exactly what he would have loved.

We opted for a closed casket. None of us could do it. We just could not take seeing him without his life. His life is what made him so special. Even when drinking and depression dimmed that light. His light, when it shone brilliantly, was so bright and awesome. My father had four. My father had four children — and we could not celebrate his life by seeing his body without his light. We just could not. No matter what our respective demons were.

My dad was well loved. Well liked. Admired. He was talented. Funny. Charming. Alcohol and depression took a lot away from him. He self-isolated and withdrew. But he loved and he loved hard. He felt more than anyone realized. I know today he’d tell me on days I’m self-isolating myself to tell him what’s wrong…that he can see I’m enchained by my own sorrow.

I believe when I was younger I pushed him away because I knew deep down.

I knew deep down that I had all of his best parts; I knew deep down that I had all of his worst parts.

And I hide the same way he did.

He was my first love.

He made me laugh. He made me cry. He taught me to fight. He gave me life.

I don’t cry much. My walls are still strong. But I lost it pretty good the day of his funeral. And again when I visited his gravesite alone on a trip through the Adirondacks one summer.

My dad will always be my daddy. He will always be the young, fun man who would take me to the dump with him and rub my nose saying “pizia.”

And when I feel sad and alone today, I feel him putting on a scratchy record, pulling me close with a mischievous glint in his eye, and I imagine him begin to sing Chiquitata. And because I love the song so much and I know he’s saying the words to me, I cry even more; so then, with a smile, he changes gears, and throws on Shaddup You Face. And I cry…but I also laugh so hard that I blow snot bubbles everywhere and maybe fart at the same time, which is so unladylike it hurts, and I pretend it didn’t happen or that it was the chair or something. Or I clear my throat and it’s just so uncomfortable because no one knows what to do when I’m emotional and I can just pass it off as menopause or something.

Four.

All four of us lived far away, so we all got the call and didn’t know what to expect. We expected chaos, to be honest.

By the time he died, he was very sick.

He was suffering horribly — he’d deny it, but we knew — he had already had one heart attack, he was not well. He lived in a tiny apartment out of town that when you walked into it, the ceiling was black from all cigarette smoke. He lived the life of a hermit at this point. He saw no one. We expected cleaning up after his life to be much like looking at his life in the end. Just…messy and somewhat disappointing.

When the four of us got there, to our surprise, on the table was a manilla file with everything we needed.

Everything was there. Numbers. His lawyer. Insurance information. Funeral arrangements. Everyone we needed to contact. Everything. We didn’t need to hunt for a single thing. It was sitting on the table for us. Right there. He had everything spelled out, everything managed, everything aligned. We couldn’t believe it. He had lived in debt most his life. What we didn’t know was that years before he had put himself through bankruptcy so he could clean it all up and make sure things were in order for us once he died. His first heart attack apparently had scared him straight, so to speak.

My dad died scared and alone. And he still managed to make sure things were easy on us in the end, even though we weren’t all that nice to him most the time.

But what I learned there cleaning out his apartment — the four of us — is that he loved us deeply and fiercely. And, speaking only for myself, just as I remember and cherish my first love — that young, sparkly-eyed, vibrant charming man—he remembered me too.

I’m often told I remind people of my father. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m gregarious but introverted, confident but insecure, creative but realistic, hopeful but doubtful, happy but sad…or whether it’s my way of finding laugher in everything, or the fact that I’m just a little bit naughty at times — you know — with a glint in my eye — or perhaps it’s the way I can tell a tale.

Some call it a knack for exaggeration. I like to call it a flair for the dramatic.

Just like my first love.

If you liked this story, I also recommend: