Author Adelaide Green

The other day my mom said she felt like “Half a parent sometimes.”

Only knowing what she would normally say and do.

But not what my father would say or do.

Feeling as though she is only able to give half of what she use to.

It made me sad to think she felt this way but as I stared out at the mountains.

I realized I feel it too, like I have half the parents now.

My mother has always been the more emotional one, the one who is very decisive. Has her opinions and nothing else matters besides that.

My father was on a different plane. He could be so angry one minute and the next he would have food and the most sound advice I’d ever heard.

He got me, he got it.

I can’t complain though, I was lucky. I am lucky. I had two parents that put us first, who were always there and I still have a mother who makes sure she is still here.

We all feel like we are grasping for something, something to fill the void. A job? A baby? A new house?

My parents had to sell my childhood home when they found out how aggressive my dads cancer Was.  I was living in Texas at the time pregnant with my second son, I had severe HG. My doctors wouldn’t let me travel, they hardly wanted me to leave the hospital.

I miss that home. Someone bought it and gutted it. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I’m homesick for a place that no longer even exists. But it held so much for me.

My childhood, my fathers younger years. Always waking up first, making breakfast. Usually a tortilla with eggs and bacon. My sisters and I would cry, DAD WE DON”T WANT THAT!”

Instead of listening or being sad, he still made them. Everyday.

I miss that, my other half of my parents.

I miss his crinkly eyes, his wide nose, his big heart. I realized today, staring at the mountains he loved so much, he is there. He is in the ocean once again, riding the waves, looking beyond the sunset, he is on the mountains, running up the hills with the mountain goats but this time there aren’t a bunch of women yelling below him. He is in the playroom with his grandsons, playing cars and trains. He is in my heart, throbbing where it feels like something is missing.