Where my father lives

Every year May 5 comes around. Tequila, fiesta, amigos, celebration. For me its different. The worst memory of memories I have falls on this day. The day my father died. Eleven years has passed so quickly. And my childhood passed even quicker. I grew up with my dad, my comrade, my best friend. We were not wealthy, but I never knew the better, because to me, I was the happiest kid in the world. My father was an inventor; an inventor of games, inventor of laughter, an inventor of songs, and he showed me how to love and appreciate what was in front of me.

We took walks frequently,hiding dimes in trees so that we could find them again on our next adventure. May day, every May day, he would celebrate by buying me flowers of some sort, usually carnations, saying he loved carnations, but I think it was all he could afford. He would make up holidays, like pioneer day, where we would dress up as pioneers, turn out the lights and eat fish. We had un-birthday parties, and created a cookbook for people who hated following directions. There are a million and one other things I could write, proving the character of my father, but I'm saving them for myself.

I do my best to make it through the year without my parents. Its not easy, its more than not easy, its honestly awful. I feel so alone, and often orphaned. I feel my father in decisions, I hear him in my words, I smell his tobacco. I try to be the kind of parent he was to me.

I remember when I was 16, we sat in the livingroom across from each other on the couch, I was crying. He was sick, again, and I told him that I couldn't stand the thought of losing him. He said, "oh, honey, I will always be here, I will always be in your heart." He knew he was dying and neither one of us wanted to admit it.

Every year on May 5, I drive to Mt. Rainier, where my fathers ashes were put. The mountain is his tombstone, and the new foliage, children of his ashes. Today was no different than every other May 5 of the last 11 years, its the only day of the year I allow myself to grieve, to be sheltered and silent.

I drove into the park and passed Longmire, I can never seem to go there first. I went around the whole mountain and returned to the trail where he waits for me every year. Every step to him my chest feels tighter and tighter till I'm not sure if I can do it, but I always do.

I reach his tree. I smell his tobacco. I tell him that im sorry for not being perfect, and I hope he knows how hard I try to make him proud. It doesn't ever get easier. I leave him a cupcake and I continue down the trail, feeling like it was the first time I said goodbye.

Where my father lives is within the stones of the mountain, in its rivers and in its nature. He lives in me, just like he said he would, but I miss him like crazy.