Emily Articulated: A daughter’s seasons

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

This article talks about addiction and death. Take care and pass by if you need to.

Reflecting on a life of loving someone who struggled with addiction is a lot like looking back on seasons; clusters of months and years grouped by their shared sense of feeling, markers of his relationship with alcohol and my relationship with him. 

Because this person was my dad, my earliest memories are rooted in a season of not knowing; sunny vignettes of him applying Band-Aids to my scraped knees mixing with smells of freshly mowed grass and the way his shoes turned green from the task. Blips of fights with my mom or stretches of absence registered in my consciousness, but faded away like bad dreams or monsters under the bed — made better by trips to the park and the icy gift of a blue-flavored popsicle.

This was followed by a season of awareness, a recognition of his addiction that blossomed as I did into my teenage years. I more deftly tracked the gaps between his stints of sobriety; more accurately witnessed the relationship between his behavior and my parents’ fights. But my recognition was muddled with innocence and hope; an unshakeable belief in willpower and my dad’s ability to choose me over anything else. When he’d get sober, I’d champion him. And when he’d lose sobriety, I’d pick up the pieces of my devastation, so I could be ready to hope again when he needed me.

Emily Erickson.

This cycle of hope and loss inevitably teed me up for a season of anger. Young adult black-and-white thinking framed his addiction as a rejection of me; a lifestyle choice in which he prioritized alcohol over the people he loved. It was marked by loud fights over the telephone and my own months of silence and years of absence from his life. My perspective was forged by the fire of my anger until it gave way to a clarity that no one would choose his struggle.

I finally entered my season of forgiveness; of understanding addiction as a disease, not so much a choice as a daily battle against himself. This season was marked by empathy and the creation of boundaries, allowing us to rebuild our relationship on a foundation of acceptance and love. Our cautious first steps gave way to a heavily trodden path of discovering who we could be to each other, despite his addiction.

I was deep in this last season when alcohol finally took my dad’s life, printed forever as his “reason for death” on his final documents. But, as I study the line item that is meant to be his legacy, it feels too incomplete. “Alcohol abuse” doesn’t leave room for all the other life and love that occurred amid his struggle.

It can’t account for the times he snuck me Snickers bars when my mom wasn’t looking, or the way he proudly guided me through my first cast on a little pink fishing pole. It doesn’t capture the hours I spent sitting on his lap watching cartoons, or how he cheered from the sidelines at my track meets, waiting for me with open arms and a water jug at every finish. 

A death certificate can’t capture the character of a person who got third-degree burns trying to save his beloved dog from a burning building, or the way he made me pancakes, eyes glittering as we dipped our fingers in the batter. And later, when disease aged his body beyond his years, the way he summoned his energy just to take me to the movies, or the tip he insisted on leaving from money he couldn’t spare, so our Lyft driver could pick up a pizza to share with his own daughter on his way back home. 

My grief for my dad is fresh and raw, and as complicated as our relationship had been. I’m angry at the addiction from which he couldn’t escape, and the mess I’m tasked with cleaning up now that he’s gone. I’m sad about all the life he missed out on living, and the rest of mine in which he won’t get to participate. I’m heartbroken that we’ll never speak again, and that the little girl who never stopped hoping has to work through this final process of letting go. I’m grateful for the woman he helped shape me into and the memories his addiction couldn’t prevent him and me from making (the real legacy that’s now mine alone to carry).

Instead of his cause of death, I want to remember his hands — strong enough to shape raw pieces of wood into beautiful works of art; steady enough to push a pencil into life-like sketches of his surroundings; nimble enough to plunk the strings of a guitar; and soft enough to hold his daughter’s in his own. 

I want to remember him as the sum of all his parts, the person he tried to be, the person he so often was and the person I’m proud to have called “dad.” And now, I will.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.