OPINION: Dolly Parton, delicious food and lots and lots of photos: this is how I'm building Father's Day memories for my daughter
Over the past few weeks, I have watched the date approach with growing anxiety. Father's Day has come again. It is an inescapable reminder that I no longer have a father to celebrate with.
So I pushed my sadness aside, put on a smile, and helped her make a card, bake cupcakes and set up an indoor camping ground.I felt like I had been robbed of my day with the memories of my dad. Father's Day had forced me to be in the present with my daughter and her dad, while a part of me wanted to stay in the past with my father.On Father's Day a part of me wants to stay in the past with my father Jean-Baptiste.
I think that this impossible reconciliation between the present and the past makes people hold onto the pain of grieving for a long time. In a way, even the pain becomes an important connection to the person who has died.But there is a problem with this for me. You see my father loved to laugh. The irony of remembering him by moping over past photos would not have escaped him. Being sad is just not being truthful to him.
I always thought picking one special day to celebrate my father felt contrived. I didn't need a day to have fun with my dad, we were having fun all the time. I didn't need a day to say I loved him and to thank him, especially because we both used to get really awkward at expressing emotions. Of course the day felt contrived. It was more than contrived: it was staged. My mother was staging a day to make memories. She gave a particular colour, smell, background, life, to every picture taken each Fathers' Day.
It was never about the picture, it was about the day they were taken: the food, the music, the cards and the family gathering were not just the background to pictures. Today they are the connection to my father.I am so grateful to my mother for insisting on building these family traditions over time. The memories we made on those occasions are the ones I will draw on when I open my suitcase of photographs.This year I want to help my daughter build memories with her father.
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