Day 41

When we were going through the process of adopting our kids we learned an interesting phenomenon that happens to people around trauma or loss.  Somewhere, deep inside us there is something in the brain that acknowledges loss.  For example, Justin was taken from his birth mothers home and placed with his grandmother on the 15^th of the month, we also took him from Iowa around the middle of the month.  When he first came to live with us he would turn into a different child the middle of each month.  You could almost set your clock by it.  He would act up, become defiant, and unmanageable.  He did this EVERY month for the first year two years and still acts out in the same way every few months, during the middle of the month.  We spoke with the social worker and she said it was very common for children to do this and adults do this as well.  You don’t really know why Aprils a bad month for you, but it always has been, or why the first day of school is really tuff or ….the list goes on.  But somewhere, inside of our subconscious, there is memory that runs so deep that it is part of our DNA.  Well, that’s what happened today.  I was so sad and weepy, I couldn’t figure out what was going on with me. I don’t usually feel despair and that’s exactly what I felt.  Then I saw something that reminded me, today is the day my dad died.  Died is the polite way of saying committed suicide.  My brave cop, funny, fashion forward, lover of all the finer things, often politically incorrect father took a gun to his head and shot himself.  I can’t even begin to convey how shocking that was.  I had just spoken with him the week before, he was ranting on and on about President Obama.  He was doing his best to get a rise out of me as he often did.  Ever since I was a small child my good hearted dad would wax on about the supremacy of white people.  I don’t think he really believed it, I think it was his way.  Bob Malone, underneath the cigarettes, the swearing, and the racial slurs was all heart.  A good man who after arresting illegal immigrants, would take the cash they had on them and wire it to their family in Mexico because he knew the boarder guards would take it from them.  He was so funny he could make you snort, cry and pee your pants all at the same time.  He was also a little crazy, he taught me things like don’t ever start a fight but if someone starts a fight with you, you better win it.  He taught me how to slam my fist up someone’s nose to render them helpless.  He taught me never to get in a car with someone who was going to hurt me, because when we arrived at the destination, they would kill me so it was better to take my chances on the outside.  Not the usual things a father teaches a daughter, but it was his way of keeping me safe. He was an eye for an eye kind of guy, and sadly there is a piece of that in me that I struggle with sometimes, especially if you hurt someone I love. He also took me camping and fishing, taught me how to ride a horse, and how to be a MALONE (that can go either wayJ).  If you have seen All My Children, this will make sense to you, Erica Cane always refers to herself as Erica Cane, as though she is a force to be reckoned with. That’s how it was for my father, you’re a MALONE.  And even now, when I am really scared, I can hear his voice, “You’re a Malone damn it.” All in all in the clearest pictures I have in my heart of my dad is of him laughing, holding pinkies as we walked together, seeing him cry like his heart was breaking when my mom left him, and the tears he shed when I went away to college.  He was my hero, my toughest critic, fiercely protective and…my daddy.