I Don't Know If I Can Do This.

I don’t know that I can do this.

He once smelled of white t-shirts and grease, cigarettes and stale beer, old garages and car exhausts.
He let me dance on his toes, drive Mom’s first car
…he bought her that car…
He brought me up in love, picked me up in concerts, and showed me things I was too small to see on my own.

I remember,
We used to drive for nowhere, stop for hotdogs, and sing old punk songs no four-year-old should know,
But I knew.
I still know his holes, his eyes, and the way his voice gives podium to the truth.
I still know his fear he glazes with fatherly comfort and strength and he’s stood so tall
For me–for us.

One night Momma left because the bills couldn’t be paid and Daddy tried to put my hair into a tight pink bow, and I cried.
Years later, he smiled to a stadium full of our Tyrone, Georgia smalltown football fans as he held my sister’s hand–proud.
He’s always been proud.

One year later, I was holding his hand as he laid in a hospital bed unable to finger a fork into a soft peach cup.
One year later, I was holding my mother’s hand as she watched her other half lose half his lung to a doctor who had no idea what he even had in his hands.
One year later, I was a woman holding together her father’s small business, her mother’s home, and her sister’s senior year.
One year later, I was a little girl watching her father die,
But he survived.

He fought his whole life to stand for his family and finally he won.
We thought he had won…

So how do I tell my father that I can be that strong again?
How do I face his fears and try to push back the visions of a wedding without someone to lift the veil?
How do I fight my “what-ifs” and tears and own shaking hands to tell him there’s no reason to shake or worry or stress?
He can do this again…

How do I?

How can I write you, look at you, explain to you with words the fear I once felt as I cried into a dark empty night, begging for my father’s life?
And what it means to feel that wordless fear again?
How can I?

Please forgive me if I just stand here with a smile on my face, with a mask of faith.
Forgive me God for my fear shaking in my hands and trying to pry itself through my mouth showing teeth.
I just need him to stand
I need him to believe
I need him to lift me off my own knees.

But how can he when he’s been brought to his own?
How can he?

My father–the man–with the tattoos and motorcycles and scars on the knuckles of his hands.
My father–the man–who puts the fear into my boyfriends and the respect into my heart.
My father–the man–who lost his right lung but never lost his heart, nor his pride.
My father who stands tall with my mother’s ring still holding on to his left hand.
My father–the man.

But my father is just a man. My father is just a man.

I don’t know that I can do this, Daddy, I don’t know that I can do this again.

But here we go again.
We can do this again.

God, I’m praying, I’m begging.
Help us do this again.

God, I’m praying, I’m begging.
Help us do this again.

God, I’m praying, I’m begging.
Help us do this again.