The Optimist's Guide to Letting Go

by Amy E. Reichert

You are most critical of the flaws in others that you have yourself. Perhaps that was why she was so hard on Regina—because they were too much alike. Except Regina was stronger than she was. Instead of turning cold, Regina found the warmth in everything. She had never met a glass of water that wasn’t half full, and Lorraine admired that. Perhaps if Lorraine had been able to share her own pain, they wouldn’t be sitting silent next to each other when there was so much they should be saying.

Looking back at that night, at how she’d felt so heard, Lorraine realized she had forgotten how to speak way before the stroke. She had stopped saying what was in her heart, stopped valuing her own voice. For so long, and out of fear, she’d parroted the words expected of her by Floyd, by the ladies at the club, by her own misguided belief that ignoring Joe’s memory was the best way forward. Not anymore. She would find her voice again.

“I suppose it is. I loved his patience. He would spend a day carefully taking apart an engine, laying the pieces in order, then putting them back together, cleaning each part as if it were precious. Or how he spent hours teaching you how to tie your shoes. You knew I would get impatient and do it for you, but he would happily wait a half hour until you did it yourself.

“He would always wake me up by singing the sad songs from the fifties. What was that about? The Mr. Lonely song was the worst. Or he would come into my room and fart, then leave and close the door.”

This is my dad.

No matter how messy things got, they had people who loved them, who watched out for them, who would help them clean those messes up.