Oh, daddy

I remember the distant resignation that bleached your sunken in eyes, glassy and pained with memory. I can still conjure how your wrinkled forehead creased with thought, lost in a distant, unreachable reality not even I could shake you from. I knew; I had been trying for years.
I remember when I turned my back, and with a tattered suitcase in hand, strode out the door, unable to look you in the eyes as I left. The way you stood, immobile with grief, as a simple goodbye left your lips. "Catherine, wait." The same sentiment you had yelled at my mother so many years ago, before you retreated into yourself. I knew you weren't talking to me at all, but to Her. "Oh, daddy", I whispered, but you didn't even turn around.

I liked to think that if I stayed with you, you would heal. That with my help, you would start shaving and sleeping and eating, and stop talking to yourself like it would make her come back. Some days, you would get up and smile at me, maybe even read the newspaper, hug me when I went off to school, brush your hair. Others, you wouldn't even get out of bed. It took my fifteen years to realize I couldn't fix you, and fifteen years to muster up the courage to leave you and the ghosts of my past behind.
If I had stayed, I would have wilted into something masochistic and unapproachable. Living under damp ceilings and gathering broken glass from cracked floorboards would have finally sapped me of my spirit. I was so close to being broken. As broken as you, maybe. So I had to go. If not for me, than for you. I had to save myself

I left on a train, and got off as far away as I could, with no money and no help. I still don't know how I made it, but I did.

Sometimes I wonder why I didn't come back, why I never tried to find you. Was it because I was afraid, or guilty?

I often wonder where you are now. If you're as old as the dawn, or under a headstone. I would have loved to attend your funeral. To write your eulogy. To be your daughter again. But I couldn't, it hurt to much. Maybe old age robbed you of your memory, blessed you with painless forgetfulness that finally let you be at peace. I pray it was so. Constantly I remember you, with pity and love and remorse. My life has always been about outrunning the past, but now I know I never could. But I will never regret trying.

Now and then, amongst all the busy people on the streets, I think I see you, the old you, with strong arms and an open face, pushing your way towards me. I imagine a tearful reunion, reminiscing, starting over. But then you vanish, and all I see is the outline of a man, pale against the smoggy sky, where you just stood. Then I shake your hand from my heart and your thoughts from my mind, and try to come back to the present. Sometimes it even works.

Oh daddy, I'm so sorry.