We were watching an episode of “The Closer” the other day. No, it’s not my favorite show and I think Kyra Sedgwick’s Georgia accent is more than a little thick, but it’s an easy watch and not too tough to follow. (Side note, this show totally went downhill when it became “Major Crimes” after Kyra left – totally unwatchable.). In this particular episode, a young man, befriended by Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson’s niece (who is staying with Brenda and husband FBI agent Fritz Howard for a few weeks) dies of gunshot wounds. Wrong place, wrong time.
The niece in the show reminds me so much of my own niece, not only in appearance but in actions. Brett would totally be the young lady sitting next to a new friend, trying to make him feel better. The victim is drugged up on morphine for his injuries and everyone is waiting for his mother to arrive from Honolulu, even though the doctor has said he will never survive the three hours it will take for her to fly in. Ultimately, the victim is conscious for just minutes and mistakes Chief Johnson for his mom and, rather than correct him, she tells him she loves him and he was no trouble to raise and all the things he needs to hear to pass peacefully.
And I have huge tears rolling down my face. I haven’t had enough sleep or coffee, or both, and the tears are starting.
Deputy Chief Johnson steps out of the room after the young man dies and Lieutenant Provenza is standing there, waiting. He is a member of her team. As he tells someone he calls, it is 4:14 am, and he is there, dressed - in slacks, a sweater vest and a sports coat. And as Deputy Chief Johnson is trying to control her emotions he offers her his clean, white handkerchief. Just in case she needs it.
And I lose it.
Billy looks at me, somewhat quizzically, and says “you know it is only a TV show, right?” (Side note 2 – I have come a long way in this. My mom and sister used to cry at Kleenex commercials or “Little House on the Prairie” and I would have zero emotion. Now, I feel.)
Yes, I do.
But what Billy doesn’t know is that my daddy always had a clean, white, handkerchief. He was always dressed if he was out of the house, even if it was the middle of the night or early in the morning. He was always there, if you needed him to be.
At that moment, Lieutenant Provenza was my daddy and I was hit with a tidal wave of emotions.
You’d think, after so many years, that you have everything compartmentalized and smothered deep and something as simple as a plain, white, handkerchief would not reduce you to a blubbering mess.
But it does.
And you can’t stop it.
All you can do is let it wash over you and then carry itself back out into the ocean of memories that you keep at a distance.
Billy has learned that this happens, sometimes. I can be standing in the kitchen, crying, because the grill bought back a memory or the thought of using BBQ sauce reminded me of his homemade sauce or any number of things that can hit when I least expect it.
But, like surviving in the ocean itself, you can’t fight the wave. Your best bet is to let it wash over you, and then swim counter to it. Not against it, that will never work. But across it. Let it hit you, but not take you under.
Working to survive it, but not to fight it.
Because in the end, the survival is what makes us what we are. And my daddy is very proud of who I am. Losing him changed me, in so many ways. But they would be good, positive, changes.
So I swim. Against the wave. Fighting the crest. Not allowing myself to go under. But welcoming the sweet tears on my face that remind me that I loved, I lost, I feel, I survived, I thrive.
I don’t drown.
