Reflections on Grief, part 3 (beyond any hurt)

I'm really not a whiny baby.

I mentioned to my butt-kickin', shuck-to-the-cob older daughter, Shellie, how daughter-two Portia's graduation, and imminent move to far-off Massachusetts, have my heart still sore and reeling.

Shellie put her four years of university study, as well as specialized advanced-placement high-school classes, and degree in Psychology, to well-honed use, and provided me her keen, unmitigated observation.

"Dad, you are a girl."

She also went on to admit she'd recently called her guy-friend a "woman" because he'd cringed – did I hear that right, Shell? – at a spider. I laughed in true paternal pride, and suggested she remind him she'd spent much of her childhood poking slugs in their eyestalks. She might just do that, too.

I'd needed that laugh (sure bet: this may well have been her ulterior motive).

Of course I've been improving tremendously since Friday morning. And one touchstone in particular I haven't really dragged to the spotlight is this particular observation (which would have earned me an academically-certified "Well, duh." from Shellie) that got me through Friday morning up until Portia's graduation, and afterward, a bit: This time, this phase, this threshold – it's not about me, of course. It's about Portia.

I know that. I haven't lost sight of that… although the inner tears do dim my eyes of rationality, now and then.

The strongest current in my thoughts and emotions isn't "Oh, man does this hurt!", but is still the huge-swelled heart's pride in Portia's stunning success(es) now, and the tremendous oyster she's merited, upon which rests a pearl I myself could never have earned, let alone reached for.

Bluntly: I certainly didn't expect the depth of the ache, still, at the close of this phase of my life with her. Oh, sure; my heart pouted a bit once I knew she'd outgrown my lap, but right about then she was also trotting out some awesome, unique observations and experiences to the world, and to me. And sometimes we've even gone weeks and weeks, here and there, without sharing a call, an email, an hour.

Still, I'm reminded of how I felt at Shellie's first day of kindergarten. I got her settled in with her teacher, saw she was quite fine and enjoying herself, and walked slowly back to my car, ready to cry. (I don't know how far it was from the kindergarten-classroom to my car, but surely it was the same thirteen steps that traditionally led up to the gallows.) In my head a verse wrote itself (I've never put it on paper, and now's about twenty years too late), naming itself "Thrown to the Lions" – meaning the girl I'd rescued and kept completely safe was about to be devoured whole. And there was nothing I could do now.

I'd raised her largely on my own from the time she was two and a half, and virtually all she'd known and experienced and learned had been under my gaze and under my wing. Now her path would diverge sharply from mine, never again to be the same, single trail. Would she even remember me, even be recognizable, at the other end of the thirteen-year tunnel? Oh, of course.

And now, two decades later, I'm feeling this all over again for her sister Portia. Yet nearly everything Portia's known has not been through time with me, within my nest, but with her mom, under her mom's guidance, and within the cooling shade of Mom's bower.

I said why before: the too-scarce moments – walks, movies, talks, plays, meals… are particularly precious to my heart because of that scarcity. Shellie's, on the other hand, because there are so many of them – which doesn't make sense via logic and mathematics.

So?

And it isn't about me anyway. It's about her.

And she's still mine. She always will be.

I hate clichés. And I can write them till the cows come home. For as far and as high as these girls fly – especially now the golden younger one, who at the moment stands at the precise center of this current soreness to my heart – , they carry within their own souls each an enormous piece of my own, of my heart. (You know, I'd be frightened to the core if I didn't ache for her.)

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

This is love. All you need.