by: Trish Cantillon

By the fall of 1980, my dad had died of cirrhosis of the liver. In the last year of his life I felt angry, sad and guilty. I did whatever I could to avoid seeing him and barely tolerated him when I did. He was bottoming out in his disease and at only fifteen, I was ill-equipped to manage those complicated feelings. His death brought relief and I was immediately grateful to be out from under the overbearing weight of his alcoholism.

I was able to summon a positive attitude and cheery disposition for the big moments when I would especially miss the presence of my dad: birthdays, graduations, marriage. I could prepare for those moments and steady myself emotionally for the moments I knew I was going to be the girl whose dad wasn’t there.  However, it was during the unremarkable events when the deep sense of longing began to emerge.  After a visit with my friend Amee at her parents’ home in Orange County, her dad walked me out to my car. He gave me a big bear hug, double checked that I was sure I had enough gas to get back to L.A. and that I knew my way back to the freeway.  He stood in the street and waited until I pulled away. When I got to the corner stop sign and checked my rear-view mirror, he was walking back towards the house. Tears welled in my eyes. His simple, kind gesture left me feeling alone in a way I had not known before. It was grief, not so much for losing my dad, but for the feeling of absence that his death created.  I felt a real heartache at the recognition of what I would never have in my life. At that point, I began searching for ways to recreate a connection with him.

On a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Fun Zone Amusement Park and Arcades in Newport Beach when I was six, my dad, my Uncle Jack and I took pictures in a photo booth. I found one of the strips and put it in a frame by my bed. I took my diary with me to coffee shops and wrote him long, detailed letters about my life. I told him the things I thought he would be proud of me for: putting myself through college, working full time and managing good grades. I wondered what advice he might give me for the challenges I faced: annoying bosses, finding a boyfriend, managing my own finances.  And finally, I resurrected my gold T charm and necklace.

In in the fall of 1977, the last time he was sober, my dad took a trip to Italy with some friends. He was not a traveler, preferring instead the comfort of our beach house in Newport where he could lay in the sun, slathered in cocoa butter and work on his tan. The sober overseas trip was kind of a big deal. When he got home, he presented my sisters and me each with a solid gold initial charm on a gold chain. I was glad he got me the “T” for Trish instead of a “P” for Patricia, the full name I never used. Getting a gift wasn’t unusual, he was a very generous person, but the souvenir he brought was usually a Tinkerbell Perfume set from the airport gift shop.

The gold T charm and chain had been tucked safely in a silk pouch in my red satin jewelry box with the embroidered flowers. I hadn’t worn it for years, having considered it out of fashion for my 1980s style that was long on costume beads, pearls and bangles. But when I was a young professional in the early 1990s, its style had more appeal and seeing it again felt like discovering hidden treasure.  It was the only thing I possessed that came from my dad to me– an actual physical link between the two of us. And, it came from a singularly good time in his life. It was going to be my touchstone for the moments and experiences I wanted to share with my dad. The almost imperceptible feel of the chain on my neck and the weight of the solid gold T resting just below my collar bones brings immediate comfort. I run my fingers over the hard edges of the T when I am thinking seriously, doing something that challenges me, or just need to feel a connection. It’s the way that I can tell him, this is hard, I am scared or isn’t this fantastic!  It’s a tiny thing that reminds me I’m never alone.

 Hopefully, it will be many years before the gold chain and T will belong to my twenty year-old daughter. She knows its provenance; a gift from my dad from Italy, when I was twelve. But I don’t think she knows the special significance it holds for me. Through the stories I have shared, she has formed her own idea of her grandfather. Maybe he’s a shadowy figure whose unpredictability is unsettling to her. Or maybe he’s a dad who found joy being spontaneous and took great pride in his kids. Both are true. My daughter is one of the things I am most proud of in my life, and knowing how much his family meant to him, I am certain that my dad shares that pride with me. It makes me happy to know that one day, they too will be just as connected as the nearly invisible links of this gold chain.

Main photo courtesy of: Kim Stiver

Bracelet photo courtesy of: Pradipna Lodh

Photobooth image courtesy of: Kevin Grieve

Trish Cantillon is a married mother of two who has published on The Fix, Refinery 29’s “Take Back the Beach,” Storgy, Brain Child Magazine Blog, and in Gold Man Review and Berkeley Fiction Review. She works for Dream Foundation, the first and only national organization serving terminally ill adults, and their families by providing end of life dreams.