My First Valentine

My father was my first Valentine. He was my first everything. My first love, and along with my mother, my primary playmate, and my earliest friend...

My father was my first Valentine. He was my first everything. My first love, and along with my mother, my primary playmate, and my earliest friend. I was born on December 13, 1973. My mother told me that after I was born, they put me under the Christmas tree as they believed I was the best gift they had ever received. My mother also told me that since they were both so busy caring for me as a newborn, they didn’t find the time to take the tree down until sometime in March. I wonder if on Valentine’s Day, my father placed me under the tree again, not only as the best gift he ever received, but now as his new little valentine.

For as long as I can remember, every Valentine’s Day I received a card from my father in the mail with a check inside. I always told him that he didn’t need to send a check with the card, that the thought was enough, but he always promptly overlooked that. He would frequently say things like, “Well, it’s going to be yours anyway someday,” or “If I don’t give it to you, I’m just going to bet it at the racetrack anyway,” he would say with a chuckle.

The interesting thing was that he rarely gave the card to me in person. It made sense when I was younger because as a teenager and young adult, I was a social butterfly, always going out, and hard to pin down. Even though he always took me out to dinner to celebrate, he sent the card beforehand. As I got older, and especially after I gave birth to my son, when I saw him practically every day, he would still mail it. I guess there’s still something special about receiving a card in the mail. My dad was always an old-fashioned kind of guy.

When I was a young child, before the days of boyfriends and monumental crushes who would ultimately, at some point, assume the role of valentine, my father would pick me up, and we would go to dinner. Even as I got older, if I happened to be single when Valentine’s Day rolled around, I always felt secure knowing no matter what, I would have someone who would make me feel special.

If I was in a relationship, my father still made sure to treat me to dinner, even if it was a couple of days before or after to remind me that no matter how old I was, I would always be his valentine. Sometimes we would go alone. Other times, the boyfriend would come along, and of course, welcome the fact that dinner would be paid for in full giving him a reprieve from the inflated prices that come along with the “holiday” that either he just paid, or would be paying in a few days.

My father was a very pleasant and agreeable man and had a gift to make people feel seen and welcomed. He was very personable, and everyone felt relaxed around him where they could be themselves, without pretense. He was very unassuming, and people gravitated easily to his even-tempered and humorous nature. He had a knack to make people smile, and laugh, and he was a natural jokester.

He wasn’t the type of father who would grill my significant others like hamburgers going up in flames even though he expected respect for both me and him. So, for my father to take me and a significant other out to dinner, even on an ordinary day, was something that happened quite frequently my boyfriends naturally felt at ease around him.

After my father passed away, I was tasked with cleaning out his apartment, so I was on a time schedule to get it in order. Even though I had people who offered to help me, I preferred to go alone. I was devastated by the loss of my father, so I used that time to spend with him by myself, talking out loud, praying he would hear me, begging for him to come back, and sometimes crying so hard that I could barely breathe.

It was beyond bizarre being in his apartment without him. I visualized that at any moment he would walk through the door, and this nightmare would fade away. I would imagine him at the stove whipping up his favorite Italian dishes while the television was tuned to the horse racing channel in the background, or him reclining on the couch engaged with his beloved crossword puzzles that he enjoyed. I felt so alone, like a part of me vanished.

I struggled to tell myself that he was just out of town on a long vacation, and he would return, but when the awareness hit me that wouldn’t be happening, as he ceased to exist anywhere on the planet, the finality of that sadness suffocated me. The man who was always there for me no matter what, during the ups and the downs of my life and everything in between, was no more. That realization devoured me.

Dad passed away in March, approximately three weeks after Valentine’s Day. As I was rummaging through his belongings, it didn’t even register with me that I never received a card from him, which would’ve been the first time that ever occurred in my life. I didn’t think about the card I never received because I was too busy thinking about whether Dad was ever going to be able to come home again.

As I was sifting through some things in the kitchen, I unearthed a Valentine’s Day card that my father meant to send to me but never did. He even had one for my son, as he started that tradition after he was born, but they were starkly blank. As I read through them, my heart burst into a million pieces as hot tears flooded my eyes.

Because he was admitted into the hospital a few days before Valentine’s Day, he never did get a chance to fill them out and mail them to us. Even though he was very ill, so sick that he ultimately passed away, he still never forgot to get the cards. While he had every valid reason not to get to the store, he still did, remembering what my son and I meant to him, and in turn, I’ll never forget what he meant to us.

I still have both of those cards tucked away in boxes of my father’s belongings that I saved from his apartment. I haven’t had the courage to open them again as part of me still doesn’t even want to believe or acknowledge that he’s forever gone from this world. I want to sift through those boxes, remembering the wonderful man my father was, and how blessed I was to call him dad, but for now, I can’t.

To me, it still doesn’t make any sense how or why this even happened, and why my father isn’t still with us. Seeing all his belongings, and photographs of memories past in my closet, and not with him where they should be, is a glaring reminder of the monumental loss from my life.