Sweet Dreams-47…Tears Of My Childhood

Chapter 47

I’m doing the shivery weepy thing while looking at the spot that where my daddy is buried and I can’t, I can’t get just dad there in my head and I don’t know if it’s the ghost voice of the little kid version of me bubbling up in my head or that I’m really turning into that much of a girl.

And if that’s the case I’m here like this and he’s…he’s down there and…

It hurts…fuck it hurts like my throats all clenched up and someone’s sort of sitting on my chest and I can’t stop crying.

I’m not on any damned hormones yet, why can’t I stop crying!?

Then Alex holds me and I have a flashback.

The sunshine almost feels the same as it did that day and even the cemetery isn’t open and clean enough to not still smell like the old neighborhood and it’s that feeling…Alex holding me and that sensation of a much bigger stronger body wrapped around me from behind…

It mirrors the feelings of when my daddy covered me up with himself and…

I swear, I swear that I hear the booms…and feel the impact though him into me and while it’s not that freak out PTSD lost completely thing you see on TV its.

Sudden sweat breaking all over and my insides tighten up and I can’t breath right it’s like my brain just went off and took an autonomic function with it. And there’s this storm that’s there like someone dropped a jerry can of gasoline into a brushfire and it’s anger and more anger and…

They took him from me!

I was there!

I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t do anything! Anything!

Anger and guilt.

I couldn’t do anything…I survived…

I survived and I was left with Her.

And that bastard Cliff.

There’s times I’ve cried before but it’s been nothing like this, there’s no real way for me to really say what the pain is really like.

This…this thing in me that’s cracking open soul deep in me I’ve tried to keep locked away.

Needed to…to keep sane.

Then the cracks start and that first chunk of it falls like a chunk of a dam hitting the water only what comes from each little chunk is never a plop or a splash no…their waves, huge friggin waves swamping everything I am inside.

If daddy hadn’t died those things wouldn’t have happened…

If I had died these things wouldn’t have happened…

In that crying comes anger and it’s me just hurt and mad at the pain I’m in and being swamped by it and I scream…hurt angry scream and cry out.

And I start shrugging Alex off of me and getting out of his arms and I start hitting the grave marker.

Over and over again screaming… “Why…and It’s not fair…why’d he get to live (Cliff.)…You left me!...”

I know it’s pointless too that anything that I do is not going to change what’s already happened and it’ll never erase the scars.

It’s why I’m actually enjoying the pain as my knuckles hit the stone and are getting scratched up and bloodied.

I think I elbowed Alex a couple of times but he get’s a hold on me and he literally drags me while we’re on our knees out of reach of me busting my hands up dirt and spruce and pine needles…tears, pain and sunshine and love…?

Yeah Love…

Alex is holding me again and I rage a second or too more struggling in his arms and he’s there…just there like the rock I so desperately need in the waves of all of this and it starts to fade or settle away and I’m still cry but I’m breathing again…like…like the pain got me through this somehow.

Yeah I so know that I’m messed up.

I’m there in Alex’s arms for awhile longer and I’m still crying but I sit up.

“You okay…?” He sort of whispers into my ear.

(Sniffle-cough.) I just nod at this point not trusting my voice.

He let’s me go and I knee walk over to the grave again and just stare at it while crying.

I want to be feeling something other than this.

And that’s pissing me off but of course in that whole girl that doesn’t want to cry way but she’s crying anyway sort of thing and it just tops itself off with me getting right in mid sobby bawl the hiccups.

And that’s when I kinda start to cry laugh and bend over and I put my head down on his little plaque stone.

I feel a jacket get draped over me and I know its Alex’s because it smells like him. I’m there face down for awhile and sniffle and breathe there and there’s all these things running through my head of what to do now or what to say and then April is there squatting down beside me with her arm around my shoulders and she passes me an open bottle of water.

“Here…sip.”

I take some sips not realizing how dry I got from crying I was and she has a tissue there and she holds it out to me. “Thanks…Mom…” I hiccup again…dammit.

“It’s okay, blow your nose honey it’ll help you breath right I do the same thing sometimes when I get bawly.”

I blow my nose and look at her she’s got her make up pretty much destroyed like mine and her eyes are really red rimmed too and that hurts but in a good way that she was crying because or rather for me.

She gives me this soft, strong, warm smile too. It’s that smile you’re supposed to get from your mom.

I’ll take it though o I will definitely take it.

Family so very, very often and I think more than people say is more than blood.

And there’s something there now between us. This whole thing here with me and me hitting daddy’s marker is so much like me at the fancy restaurant and me and the bathroom stall.

April was there for that too.

She holds me and we just quietly sit there and I’m slowly getting my thoughts together enough to sip enough water and take some long controlled breaths through my nose enough to get rid of the hiccups and she gets up after another hug and a kiss on my cheek and then my forehead and I just sit there until she passes me my purse and the poem thing I wanted to read to him.

That’s what starts me talking to him and getting him up to speed sort of with all the things and the people in my life. I suppose I could have gone into detail and stuff but I’ve said a lot already about the people in my life so…it’s just daddy getting caught up.

April’s close by and I really, really am craving a smoke again…dammit I never should of took the cig Adam offered.

But after awhile Alex walks quietly up and sit’s with me and passes me a coffee and he has one and he set’s one there on dad’s plaque.

It’s sort of nice but odd I guess. My life I really am unsure about the whole something to believe in.

We just are there and we’re quiet and then…

“Sir…”

“Sir…I’m Alex. And I’m with your daughter. She hasn’t said a whole lot about you but the things she has said kinda make it so I think I’d have really liked to have known you.”

“You’ve got a really great daughter here…”

I’m staring at him and my heart is just…it hurts and it hurts but it’s…

At no point in my life would I ever have expected this…Alex…and the way he just sort of quietly makes things alright…

“Honestly sir…I’m not sure where I’d be right now if it wasn’t for Hunter and I’m still trying to figure out just how I got this lucky.”

Him lucky…Alex…

“She’s brave, she’s beautiful and she’s strong…all the stuff that has happened to her Hunter survived…she survived and when she was out of that wreck her life was she some how found all this heart and all this strength to save me…”

He looks over to April and Adam.

“To reach out and save all of us sir…we didn’t find her and save her sir…Hunter found us and it was the other way around.”

I’m crying all the water I drank earlier and I can stop smiling even though this is almost as hard in the whole other direction for me.

“I just…I just wanted you to know that sir…to know that she’s just that kind of girl and…and that I love her…”

I can’t help it I’m actually sobbing again but in a good way and I spill my coffee as I crawl into his lap and bawl on Alex’s shoulder.

He pulls me tightly into his arms and his lap and wraps me in his warmth and all that love and protection.

Alex…

He holds me when I’m angry, he pulls me back from the edges, he holds me when I’m happy…he makes the pain get chased away.

I’m not sure how long that lasted but when I tilt my head up he kisses me there long and slow and sweetly and we sort of cuddle. He takes out a couple of these packs of stickers. Just those cheap ones that you get anywhere for little kids.

“Alex?”

“I got these when I went for the coffee; I just sort of thought of something when I saw them there.”

“What?”

………………………………Alex helps me to my feet and we brush the dirt and needles and leaves from our clothes and we head back to where we parked and where April and Adam are at.

I look back to the marker and it’s there with stickers of butterflies and flowers and some pretty designs like I’d have done if I was me…girl me…the real me at the age I lost him at and under the date at the bottom of where the had his name is.

Hunter will always love her Daddy.

I wipe away at another stray tear before heading away. ‘I’ll come back Daddy, I promise.”