The anxieties of leaving in five days are definitely starting to kick in. Somewhere between breaking in my shoes and counting the pounds that I’ll be lugging on my back, I’ve found myself wandering around my recently discovered anxieties. I’ve developed a couple anxieties since my dad passed and here they are for your enjoyment:

1. Sleeping with my cell phone in bed, eventually resulting in brain cancer. I am actively trying to keep all things electronic as far away from my organs as possible. This includes microwaves and I’ve also recently become aware of the danger that resides in laundry rooms. Radiation freaks me out all of the sudden.

2. Having a still quiet moment by myself. My mind goes nuts and sometimes I feel like it literally searches for problems to worry about. Like the amount of radiation waves in my laundry room.

3. Falling face first on a treadmill. I used to love running on these things and now the idea of potentially not being able to control the speed of the ground MOVING underneath my feet kind of makes me wonder why everyone uses them so casually and frequently. Why are these things legal? This machine is either a death sentence or a recipe for a really embarrassing moment at the gym. What if the buttons don’t respond to my touch?

4. Coffee stopping my heart cold. This could be related to the fact that I’ve been drinking coffee like its my full time job recently. We purchased a new coffee machine that requires the push of two buttons and poof — coffee.

5. I’ve become hypersensitive to all anxieties related to my mom’s health. No explanation necessary.

6. The worst anxiety of all is the worry that my dad will somehow be forgotten or left behind.

This one scares me the most. It’s this constant fear that if I don’t talk about him or play his music or wear his clothes, he’ll no longer be a part of my life. It’s actually really sad for two reasons.. That this is my life and not some story someone is telling me, and that those are my thoughts. That he would ever not be a part of my life. That is impossible, right? Well that’s what I’ve been weirdly convincing myself of in the back of my mind.

I’ve been playing chase with this idea that if my dad isn’t with me in some physical state, whether it is words coming out of my mouth or songs I can hear or clothing I can touch, he isn’t with me. I’ve been waiting and wanting and expecting some overwhelming feeling of assurance that he’s there in a particular moment. I’ve been focusing so intently on wanting him to give me some sort of sign, even the signs that he’s given so graciously, I look past. Because there’s no proof other than a quick faint feeling that could easily be disguised as something I’ve made up in my mind, I don’t know if its him or not.

I first “felt” him the day of his memorial. I didn’t feel him getting ready, walking over, or greeting anyone but the second I started giving my speech, I felt a ray of some sort of light that resembled sunshine, but not quite sunshine, zooming in on me. This feeling continued on through the night and it may or may not have blinded me a tad and convinced me into thinking that I could drink like a pirate and yell at anyone who refused a shot of fireball in his honor.

The next time I felt him was in true “Drew Fashion” as my mom would say. I had spent a week in his hometown, Barrington, Illinois, with his brothers and our family. The day I got home I had to drive down to the school district where he worked for 25 years to hand out a scholarship in his name. I was exhausted. I had no time to unpack, shower or nap so I quickly put on some lipstick and headed out the door. I hadn’t realized it then but it was the first time I had driven in a while, being on vacation and all. My car over heated while I was gone so I had to drive his car. I get in the car and I’m trying to find a radio station, everything on the radio is crap so I try the CD that’s in the CD player and its Bob Dylan. I’m driving in his car, blasting his music, speeding like all hell trying to not fly off a cliff on the windy back roads of Buckman Springs. I thought I felt him with me in the passenger seat.
Low and behold, I get so lost I receive a “Welcome Abroad” text message bringing me back to reality, telling me to change my data plan, meaning I’m basically in Mexico. So inevitably, I’m late to this scholarship dinner. I somehow stumble across the school, come screeching into a parking spot and find my way to an auditorium with a much larger crowd than I had imagined. I come walking in with my aviator sunglasses on looking like a character you would write up in a story, so I take my sunglasses off and slink my way to a seat on the bleachers in the back. My sister told me there would be someone there to greet me and check me in but by that time I just wanted to make the least amount of noise as possible and figure out if there was some sort of itinerary. There was. Someone handed me a program and I find out that, thankfully they didn’t pass me, I’m one of the last speakers to go up.
So I’m sitting through all the names being called, kids accepting awards and my mind wanders off… I can’t help but laugh at myself. It was totally a situation my dad would have unconsciously created for himself, rolling up late, parking so crooked that I could have easily walked outside to a towed car and no ride home, my hair is a curly mess and I’m sure my bright blue aviators upset someone or another, there is assigned seating and I’m sitting on the back bleachers. I don’t know if I “felt” him that day or if I just felt like him, but either way I am definitely my dad’s daughter.

The last time I felt him has been the most emotional for me. I don’t think I can accurately explain the moment in detail because it was really just a simple moment in time. I drove up next to a man in a beat up old blue truck and we made eye contact. He grinned and I immediately saw my dad’s face. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced. I saw him and his chubby cheeked smile grinning through this old man’s truck window and it was like slow motion for the next, what seemed like, fifteen seconds. The guy probably thought I was insane because I then started to cry and just stare at him but I couldn’t pull my eyes away. It instantly reminded me of what it felt like to look at him in conversation while laughing or just having his face close to mine. I was totally overwhelmed and caught off guard. It was a painful mixture of happiness and heartbreak. I miss him every day in every second but what I am constantly missing are just memories with him and of him. Seeing his face in this man’s window brought him to life for a quick second and it felt so amazing and uplifting but at the same time my heart was hurting because I knew it wouldn’t last. Sure enough, it didn’t last. The man drove away.

I think that was my dad’s way of giving me what I’ve been wanting this whole time. I’ve been doubting his presence around me because, other than the millions of photographs I surround myself with, I haven’t physically seen his face. I shove aside all signs of him being here because they are all just feelings and I can’t prove anything. I think that this was his way of saying “have faith in me, I am here.”

A little slice of heaven to hold me over for a while.