Lost and Found

 This is an excerpt from the book “I Have No Business Being Here” - available now. Read the whole collection here.

When my dad died and we started to receive such a lovely outpouring of support, I told a friend that the phrase, "Sorry for your loss" struck me as odd. I mean, I have said it to plenty of people who have lost loved ones (see? Even I said it. Lost loved ones.). But putting it in context of my dad dying, it rang strangely in my ears.

It didn't seem hollow, because I know the people who were saying it truly meant it, just as I had meant it every time I said it to someone else. It was something about the word "loss" and "lost" that got me. He isn't lost. I have lost a lot of things in my life. In fact, losing things was a defining feature of my relationship with my father as I was growing up. But I don't know if I feel like I lost him.

My dad always fixed his hair the same way. The earliest photo I have of the patented Phil McKinney hairstyle is from 1967 and is, luckily, in color. It features my father, James-Dean-cool, in a peach button down shirt, wide collar framing his tan face topped with – the 'do. A pompadour stacked high on his head like soft serve in a cone.

To achieve this hairstyle, he would shower then dry his hair carefully with the hairdryer on the lowest setting both for power and heat. Next he used a thick-toothed comb with a long handle to achieve the shape. He finished it off with some ozone-depleting White Rain hairspray straight from the can he kept perched on top of his dresser.

As a child, I found that his thick-toothed comb was the perfect tool to comb through my thick hair. When my parents could convince me to bathe, I would screech and scream if anyone tried combing my wet hair afterward. Instead, I would sneak in the master bathroom where my Dad kept his blue comb on the back of the toilet tank and take it. Without fail, it would end up inside a toy box, in a closet, somehow in the car, the backyard, the neighbor's pool. Anywhere except where it belonged.

Plenty of times growing up, I heard "Where's my comb?" The answer, obviously, was wherever the last place I had left it. The tricky part was remembering where that place was.

I knew losing things was an inextricable part of my personality when, two Christmases ago, I received not one but two Bluetooth key-trackers as gifts. I am nothing more than a taller version of that chubby little kid with a dark blonde bob being lectured by Dad: "If you would put it back where it goes, you would never lose it."

After his death, when folks were saying "Sorry for your loss," it never felt right. Because I didn't lose my dad. Although I have before.

At the State Fair of Texas each year, he would stop to buy a beer or a sausage-on-a-stick and the rest of us would keep walking. Usually he would catch up, but sometimes he would wander over to a show or to watch a salesman putting on a pitch. My mom called this behavior "Mr. Magoo-ing" because he would wander off like the cartoon character Mr. Magoo and end up in zany situations.

On the Midway, he would play the Guess Your Weight game, always pulling his pants down below his bellybutton and jutting out his gut. The guesser always overshot his weight and Dad would carry away a toy for us, triumphant. He also couldn't resist the pool table games, and eventually, mom would have to drag him away from the tables and their uneven feet.

One stop on our Fair trips was always the building beside Big Tex with the spas and gutter systems, sewing machines and mattresses for sale. One year, the first booth inside was selling storm windows. They claimed they could block out all the heat from the sun. To demonstrate this, they set up two windows facing each other, with just enough space for a person to stand between. On the outside of the windows were heat lamps. The window on the left was the competition's, and you could feel the heat burning through the glass. On the other side was the window they were selling, which remained cool to the touch. The lamps would alternate on and off, illuminating red.

Dad stood between the two windows when the lights were off. When they glowed red again, he placed a hand on either window, vibrated his body as if he were being electrocuted. He made a groaning, sputtering sound, buzzing between his lips, zzzz zzz. Two people behind him shrieked, then laughed as they realized what he was doing. Hearing their laughter, he looked over his shoulder, noticing the couple, and smiled.

One year after we had stopped to buy a Miracle Broom from one of the showrooms, he offered to carry it. The broom had a long yellow metal handle with three rows of rubber bristles on the end. As the sun got hotter and the crowd got thicker, we somehow lost Daddy in the hustle. He once again Magooed away from the pack.

Looking over my shoulder through the swamp of people, I saw, over the tops of ball caps and cowboy hats the long yellow handle and the rubber bristles of our Miracle Broom, sticking up tall, bouncing up and down as he signaled to us like ships on the sea.

So even though I had "lost" him before, I had also been comforted by knowing where he was, even if not exactly where. That day at the fair, we knew he was still at the fair (mom had the car keys in her purse). Weekdays, I knew he was at work. Around 11AM he was watching YouTube videos at his desk eating his scrambled egg sandwich or some leftovers from dinner. Between 5PM and 6PM he was driving home in his tiny blue car.

Friday afternoons, he was out with mom, probably having a very early dinner somewhere, always using a coupon. Friday nights, he would be in the brown recliner, placed just so in the exact spot in the living room as the two recliners before it, watching old movies or flipping channels because "there is nothing good on TV." Sometimes late Friday or Saturday nights, he would call, saying, "I'm sorry to bother you. I just wanted to hear your voice." He would talk about the old days, when we were kids, and tell me how proud he was of me. Sundays he would be watching football.

When people started telling me they were "sorry for my loss," my initial reaction was, "I haven't lost him. He is dead. I know where we last left him."

But now I know that's not entirely true. Because now I realize that, in a way, I have lost him. And it's worse than any other time before because right now I don't know where he is. I think that's an important part of grief. Someone you loved was here, in the same bubble as you, where you could call them or drive to them or send them a text message, but now they're gone.

Yes, I know there are a million religious and spiritual beliefs that would tell me "where" he is. But in terms of the afterlife, I think of the inability to create or destroy matter. I think maybe when we die, we splinter off into a million tiny pieces of energy. Some of those pieces hang on to the loved ones we leave behind, and those loved ones become stronger as a result.

The truly painful part in the interim is the unknown. Will I feel better tomorrow? In a month? In a year? In ten years? I can tell you those folks I know who have lost a parent seem to me, although completely put together and reasonable to the general public, to love and miss their parent just as much today as when it happened. I know enough about myself to know I'll be the same way.

So I guess I get what someone means when they say they're sorry for my "loss." It's more than my keys. It's more than the panic I felt as a kid when my mom turned down an aisle unexpectedly and left me untethered standing under fluorescent lights on some dirty grocery store linoleum. It's that nagging feeling I have had since he died; the feeling that when I get real quiet, I can feel the world is emptier without him.

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