“I don’t know how it gets better than this, you take my hand and drag me head first, fearless.” A lyric I sang at the top of my lungs in my grandpa’s Volvo on my way home from school, a sentiment I felt so strongly as I recklessly fell in love for the first time and words that twelve years later, rocketed me through time and transported me back to being a kid. An 18-year-old kid who would’ve been mad if you called her a kid for she was a woman ready to go away to college and ready to become an adult. But she was a kid, man. She was a lucky kid with two parents who loved her, a grandpa who lived with her and a safe place to call home. She was a kid who was about to get her ass kicked by the reality of life and the dark parts of her brain and the cruel certainty that is growing up. Though she would refuse to even entertain it as a possibility, she would soon get her heart broken by the boy she saw forever in. She would lose her grandpa with whom she had shared a friendship, a room and a thousand episodes of Jeopardy. She would lose respect for her body and neglect to give it what it needed. She would lose trust in herself and the world and the future. And she would slowly but in the blink of an eye lose her best friend, her guide, and her absolute rock of a dad. And in that exact moment of watching her dad take his last breath and watching her mom unfold into his lifeless arms, she would lose her childhood.
In many ways, the moment my dad died, my life began. I was given the gift of a first hand realization that life is not a clean 100-year journey. That death was not something that came when you were old and had done everything you wanted to do. That death could come storming through the door demanding you hand over your life, ready or not. That shit will wake you up. And I was sleeping. I started really living. Saying yes, feeding my body, believing in myself again, because not doing so would be dishonoring my dad who was half of me and lived in me. I started actually saying what I meant and doing what I wanted to do with my life, no longer burdened by fear. I learned to lean on friends and to go to therapy and to step by step, year by year, re-build myself and my life. And I have built a life I love. But it’s a different life than when my dad was alive. It wouldn’t really even recognize that life if it saw it. A weird thing about grief is the first couple of years, every holiday was compared to a holiday when my dad was alive and as painful as it was, it meant I was still blessed with such a vivid memory of that day with my dad that I couldn’t help but compare. I don’t do that anymore. My life looks so different and the reality in which my dad was alive and healthy is so far away that it is hard to grab. I see my dad in the sun and I hear my dad in the breeze and I feel my dad on really good days and really bad ones. But I don’t often remember a life where he was a healthy dad, where my mom was not a widowed mom, where I was just a kid.
And then I pressed play on Taylor Swift’s 2008 re-released album Fearless and there I was, getting home from track practice, smelling homemade mac and cheese, dropping my backpack and hugging my strong dad. Like it was yesterday, my body remembered the safe feeling of release. The feeling of walking through the front door and knowing everything was going to be okay because I was home with my family. I played that song and remembered listening to it for the first time. I remembered my dad giving me advice about love and coming jean shopping with me at Abercrombie and Fitch and being horrified by the rips and the volume of the music. I remember stopping at Friendly’s and getting fries and milkshakes on the way back. I remember game nights and introducing my parents to my first boyfriend and summer. The freedom of long nights and a driver’s license. I remembered the joy of waking up to the smell of apple cinnamon muffins and running downstairs to slab some butter on them before school. The feeling of seeing my dad holding up a sign cheering me on at a track meet. Of having my friends pour into my mom’s minivan as she drove us to the beach. To do cartwheels and swim and talk about our crushes and not care about anything but what we were all gonna wear on dress down day. I listened to Fearless and for a few hours, was transported back to my childhood. For a few hours, I got to hang with my dad. My healthy, happy dad. What a gift. I’ll always be his daughter but as I sit here, unable to stop listening, I am so very grateful to Taylor Swift for letting me remember exactly how it felt to be his kid.