TITLE: Withered Violets
AUTHOR: Susanne Barringer
EMAIL: sbarringer@usa.net
ARCHIVE: Anywhere okay with these headers attached.
CATEGORY: VA
RATING: G
SPOILERS: Beyond the Sea
SUMMARY: A significant anniversary brings back memories of a
complex relationship.
DISCLAIMER: Characters borrowed from Chris Carter, 1013,
and Fox. No infringement intended.
A huge thank you to Suzanne Schramm for being a friend, advisor,
ego-puffer, and a supportive and honest beta reader to boot. I've
said it before and I'll keep saying it: You keep me honest. You've
made me a whole author. :)
In memory of my father, who spoke through actions rather than
words.
_______________
Withered Violets
by Susanne Barringer
~~~~~~~
"There's a daisy. I would give you some violets,
but they withered all when my father died."
- Hamlet (IV.v.184-5)
~~~~~~~
The fifth anniversary of my father's death passes without notice.
Mulder and I were in the middle of a complicated and disturbing
case. It's not until now, two days later, that I realize the date has
come and gone. Not that it matters really. It is just another day of
the year, another day, another year, without my father.
It's hard not to feel guilty about it, however, about letting the day
pass without so much as a thought of its significance. It reminds
me of how great the distance has grown from that tragic night, the
distance from him. I can see how in five more years, or maybe ten,
his death will become just another fact of my life. I was born in
California, I don't like string beans, my father died when I was
twenty-nine. Just another thing that makes up the history of who I
am, another phrase that gets dropped into conversation when
people ask about my family.
Which is not to say I don't mourn, because I do. In the silence of
my aloneness, in the blackness of my sleepless nights, in the ever-
consuming awareness of loss that has come to characterize my life,
that is when I mourn. That is what I mourn for.
I gather violets of memories which wither and fade before my eyes.
Yet I cling desperately to them, grasping them to my breast to fend
off the madness, the insanity of sorrow and loneliness. Too much
sorrow, too much loss, and the wispy violet memories gradually slip
away, their lingering scent calling to me at the slightest reminder,
although I know that far too many have been forgotten. Each lost
memory draws me one step closer to the unattainable moment when
the days become just days, instead of days without.
I struggle through the days without, the daughter who has lost a
father, alone in my sorrow. My brothers have lost their father too,
but it is somehow not the same. My mother and I never talk about
it. Although she knows what it is like to lose a father, I cannot
know what it is like to lose a husband, so it seems better not to
know at all. We talk about him, of course. "Your father would
have loved this." "Remember when Dad played that stupid April
Fool's joke with the red paint?" But we don't talk about the
feelings, the sadness, the sense of loss that changes and matures
over time. We live out our grief as separately as we live out our
lives. A life of grief that runs from birth to maturity, never quite
fast enough but at the same time far too quickly. Little time to stop
and smell the violets, little time to capture and imprison every
memory.
My memories gather in bouquets of events and feelings, but few
words. My father was not a demonstrative man. He never told me
he was proud of me, but I came to learn that he was, mostly from
all the notes of condolence and phone calls from his friends and
fellow officers whom I had never even met. "Dana, the one who
went to medical school. The one who's an FBI agent." They all
knew me, knew who I was, his bragging about me now evident by
their identification of me. And going through the boxes of stuff he
had packed up when he retired, the items that had been in his office,
I came across mementos that he had hoarded. A couple of letters I
wrote him from medical school, talking about my classes and what I
was learning. A program from my college graduation, folded open
to the page listing the honor graduates, a neat penciled check-mark
beside my name. The program was worn from handling, as if he
had shown it to the dozens of people who had passed through his
office in the years since. And, the thing that most surprised me, a
picture of the two of us on the day I graduated from the FBI
Academy.
I remember the day I told him I was joining the FBI. The way his
face didn't budge, the way his eyes fell gently closed for a moment.
But it was the wordlessness that struck me across the face with the
force of a slap. The absolute wordlessness as he sat there looking
at me, waiting for me to say I was kidding, waiting to wake up
from what must have felt like a nightmare. Not a word, just a silent
condemnation that punctured my soul. Long moments passed,
excruciating moments of a power struggle within himself not to say
what he was really thinking, within myself not to fall to my knees
and beg him to please love me anyway.
When finally the words came, they were not as bad as I expected,
yet the ice that crystallized between us in that moment was
something I had failed to anticipate. "If that's what you want to
do," is what he finally said, the stone face not giving way for even a
moment. Those were the last words on the subject. We never
discussed my decision again.
I remember the last night I saw him, the night he died. He had
asked me, "How's work? Good?" with just the slightest edge to his
voice to signal me that he was humoring me, or, more likely,
humoring Mom.
"Yep, it's good," I replied, keeping my answer minimal, as I always
did, so as not to make him uncomfortable. He could ask for further
clarification if he wanted, which he obviously didn't. He never did.
He never would.
Becoming an FBI agent was the best choice I made, a proactive
choice, a choice for myself instead of for others. My father knows
that now. I feel his presence often, the warmth he sends me
thawing the frost that came when I finally took that step of
independence, away from the expectations he had for me, away
from his dreams and toward my own.
And so, two days after the fifth anniversary of my father's death, I
gather fresh violets and mourn that he didn't hold on long enough to
see the person I've become.
END
___________
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