Leaky faces in the family

Our family has "leaky face" syndrome -- that is, we puddle up at most anything that is sad, sentimental, happy, cute, nostalgic, and so on. It gets worse as we get older.

It's barely past noon today, and I've puddled three times already. First was when I read a blog by a woman who is dealing with her dad's illness and final decline -- so reminiscent for me of Mother's, as chronicled throughout this blog. It reminded me again of how very hard it is to watch a loved one slip bit by bit away from you and onto that shining, shining path.

Second and third were the accounts of Tiger Woods and Chris DeMarco at the British Open. Tiger won and promptly burst into tears, missing his father's presence so much at this first win without him; Chris's mother died early this month and he felt her guidance throughout the tournament.

Now I'm not the golfer in the family, but Daddy and Jimmy were/are passionate about the game, and I guess you absorb some of it just by listening. The sports section is not one I read either, but the headlines grabbed me today.

The sadness, the grief, the aching hole left by death is what resonated, and I puddled right up -- for Tiger, for Chris and his dad, for Jimmy, for me. We belong to that club, that one where you desperately, longingly miss the presence of your biggest supporter -- your parent. The one where you have to rely on memory to hear the advice and the admonitions and the pride in their voices -- to hear their voices at all, the timbre, the pitch, the tone, the laugh, the softness...

I used to just close my eyes and listen hard when, during our weekly calls, Daddy would rant about the latest political mess either at home or nationally. I'd soak up his voice then, as I did more recently with Mom, storing it in my memory bank -- not retaining much of the detail, but all of the sound. I hear Mom when I open her cookbook and see her handwriting on the maraschino cherry chocolate cake recipe. I hear Daddy when I'm going a little faster than I should be, telling me to slow down, that I don't have to be anywhere that fast.

I don't hear them every day. I don't have a leaky face every day. But today the stories reminded me of their absence, of their great love for us, and I miss them.