Finding My Way To Tomorrow

Words and Photograph by Talia Tanielian (Grade 12)

Cancer devoured my father. I was five. I was too young to recognize his impact on my life. I was too young to imagine the impact he would have on my future if he suddenly disappeared from this earth. All I could see was my father, bald and smiling, on his hospital bed, his deathbed. I refused to hug him in his last days because I thought, in my small and stupid mind, that what he had was contagious. That refusal is my only regret. I went to his closet one day shortly after that day—February 4—tried on his sweatshirt, put on a tie, slipped my tiny feet into his enormous loafers, and stared at myself in the mirror. I don’t remember what I was thinking.

In the beginning, my tears were routine. I’d miss him, just as I would if he had gone to work in the morning and I knew I would see him at night, but just couldn’t wait. I’d want to sit on his lap, have him tell me a story and lull me to sleep, but I felt no different from when he would travel for a week or two for business and couldn’t be there at bedtime.

A bit later, the thought began to sink into me—he’s not coming back. I would get angry when people pitied me, for I felt it to be a weakness. I started thinking about how little things like father-daughter dances were now enormous pits of emptiness that I would fall into because I didn’t have anyone to play that role. I was angry with myself for not spending more time with him in his last days. I rarely went to the hospital in the two or three months that he called that dreadful place home. Whether or not I had any control over that escaped my reasoning—I couldn’t forgive myself.

Sometimes I got irrational. Sometimes I’d yell and scream. Other times I wouldn’t. I grew hard. I chained up my emotions, dragged them to the cavernous depths of my soul, and left them there. Months passed. Years passed. I grew solid. I built walls along the edges of my character. I never wanted to be hurt that way again. I aimed to be impermeable. There were times when I felt enveloped by my emotions. Ten thousand different strings pulling at every crease and nook in my brain. Do this, beat that, forget them, tick, tock.

I watched and imitated my mother. Two squirts of perfume. A smile on demand. Never a rolling tear. I watched her carry on her daily life calm and collected. I envied that strength. My mom remarried, his family hated us. Such coldness was strange to me; I still believed in fantasies and make-believe, happy endings. My mother wasn’t what we Armenians call “makoor.” She wasn’t pure, she was widowed, and she had two kids. My brother and I were rejected by their family. I gripped my father as a guide through the actual death itself, being excluded from his funeral, the incessant crying, having to accept a new man in my mother’s life, and growing up knowing that many areas of my family life were, are, and always will be behind curtains.

It took some time to realize the importance of valuing his life before it was no longer there, and how I never did. Appreciating what I had before I lost it became the most important thing in my life. For about the last decade or so, this is what I wake up with and what I sleep with. It’s the central philosophy by which I live my life. I began writing, composing music on the piano, thinking, talking. I tried to remember every little detail of our time together. Memories of when we used to play a game called “yakala,” which is Turkish for “capture.” Memories of when he made me a necklace with my name on it using the beads from my Bead Studio play set. I still have that necklace. But I could only remember so much of the first five years of my life, two of which I spent in diapers. I aimed to appreciate now what I didn’t appreciate then. It was the worst feeling in the world, knowing that I didn’t value my father for who he was in my life while he was still in it.

I channeled my emotions into keeping myself busy. My schedule became my antidote. Drama kept me sane; Rachmaninoff and Chopin for days that were never-ending. I dove into a world of maintained schedules, planned appointments, and finite activities. What gradually happened was that I began to shut off for a day here, a few days there. Soon enough, relaxation became my ambition. I’d work and work in hopes of finishing everything that needed to be done to relax in its true form—worry-less. I vacillated between being intensely busy and enjoying life. I started appreciating the little things—an extra hour of sleep in the morning, one more dance after an amazing night, a random “I love you” between my mom and me—and started slowly tearing down the chains that shackled me. I trusted my friends more, I let myself talk about my past, I opened up—not as a rose blooms towards the sun to exhibit its beauty, but as a clam reveals its pearl for the first time in the shadows of the ocean: the pearl that was made from its own torture.

I’m seventeen now, quite a different girl than I was twelve long years ago. I simply consider myself bruised. My father’s death shaped my life in ways I can’t even describe. I’m scared of hospitals, disgusted by smoking cigarettes, and terrified of cancer. These emotions mirror the fears I’ve developed subconsciously throughout the years. My father’s memory pushes me forward; this experience has molded my character indefinitely. I strive for the things he never got a chance to see, to feel. I strive for success because it’s the best revenge. I strive for excellence because I know I can achieve excellence. His memory pushes me to become stronger every day.

It all works around time. How we deal with things is the fabric of how we live, how we braid ourselves into the world. We remember, long for, and despise the things in our past. We dream, pursue, and get anxious about our futures. Where is the present in all this? There shouldn’t be any waiting to value the goodness in life, because before we know it, it’ll all disappear.

Thinking back to February 4th, 1998, I do not feel the rush of tears on my cheek; I feel acceptance, and I feel ready for the next chapter of my life to begin. After all, it is my past that made me who I am today, and it is that person who is ready for tomorrow.