I finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close today. And I mean thoroughly finished. I’ve read it a lot of times before, but never got to finish it. I started reading again on September 5th, and I’m finished now, two days later. It’s the only thing I’ve been doing in the past days. And I must’ve been reading for four hours on end since I got home since 4 pm, because when I finished I looked at the clock and it was 10 minutes to 8. I looked at it with dry tears on both of my cheeks. And I realized there were also teardrops on my knees. And to be honest, it didn’t even feel like 4 hours at all. I don’t even remember turning pages. Everything went by really fast, and I was absorbing everything.
I can relate to a lot of plots and themes in the book. That’s why I loved it then in the first place. And once I’ve finished reading it, I’m sure I’ve never loved it more. I hope you don’t love anything as much as I love you. I want to do a book review about it. It’ll be the first review I’ll ever post on this blog. And that just shows you how much I love it. I love, love, love, love it. But the review isn’t going to happen until this weekend.
It’s now a favorite. I can fully declare it the best book I’ve read in 2011. Better than Jane Eyre, in a way that only I know. It relates so much to my life. It deals with a child losing a father. I am also a child who lost a father. And there are a lot of other things that I don’t think normal people will understand unless they have lost someone, or say, a father, like we both have. Like how Oskar resents his Mom for being happy. I resented my mom when she seemed to be happy, too. I think it’s an act of insulting his memory. And I’m sure Oskar feels the same. So when he’s talking about his dad, I feel like he’s talking about mine too. Our dads are so much alike. Like they liked to go on about things, saying random but knowledgeable stuff. But the difference is that mine isn’t German-American, and mine wasn’t in the World Trade Center that 9/11. When Oskar’s missing his dad, I miss mine. When he’s crying, I cry. (Well to be honest I cried most of the time.) This book. It gets me. So, so, so much. It expresses things I don’t tell anyone. It expresses me. It expresses those of us who’s lost someone.
There’s a conversation between Oskar and his mom that made me cry like there was no tomorrow.
She said, “I’m trying to find ways to be happy. Laughing makes me happy.” I said, “I’m not trying to find ways to be happy, and I won’t.” She said, “Well, you should.” “Why?” “Because Dad would want you to he happy.” “Dad would want me to remember him.”
That’s what my mom and I used to argue about. Exactly those words. Except just in another language. He reminds me so much of myself. It’s like looking at my thoughts from a third person point of view.
Do you see a difference?
“Because Dad would want you to he happy.”
“Dad would want me to remember him.”
To us, there’s a difference as big as the world.
This is not an exaggeration in any way, this is the way it is for me, and I’m being more personal than I have been in months. To me, being happy and remembering are two totally different things. It’s like there are two roads. Either I chose to be happy, or I chose to remember my dad. I can’t be both happy and remember him at the same time. It’s not fair to him, and it’s insulting his memories. Like, my dad’s dead, how can I even be happy? I was disgusted with myself for smiling, or laughing at a joke during his funeral. And you know what I chose. I chose to remember him. And days after days I would cry myself to sleep, empty myself of tears, while my mom seemed to recover from it much faster than me. I was angry at her for recovering. I thought the right thing was to mourn. For how long? I didn’t know. I only knew that I had to mourn, and I wouldn’t care if it took me forever. I didn’t want to be happy, because being happy means letting go, and letting go means forgetting. I didn’t want to forget. I’d rather be sad, but still remember. And I’m still firm on this spot. But the difference between me three years ago and me right now is that I know to try to pretend to be happy when not alone, and be sad and remember him all I want when I’m alone.
Three years clearly haven’t changed anything. I’m scarred for life, see.
When my mom seemed to have fully recovered, I was on the verge of hating her. What a disgrace, I thought. Just because your husband died doesn’t mean that you can smile, and laugh, and be happy as if nothing happened, as if you weren’t affected by this, and go out like that and have the time of your life. It’s just wrong on so many levels. It wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t fair to me. We fought about this so many times. And she said the exact same thing as Oskar’s mom did, he would want you to be happy, and me too. Nonsense, I shouted in the face. He would want us to remember him. I shouted it at her. Same words. Same feelings. Same things.
To be really frank, I still haven’t got over the fact that Mom has moved on. I haven’t forgiven her for that. And I don’t think I can. Moving on means forgetting. Moving on means leaving him behind. Moving on means you don’t want him in your life anymore. Moving on means you don’t want to remember him, that he used to exist. That’s what moving on means to me. I haven’t moved on yet. I chose not to. I still cry every other day. It’s still as hard for me as it was three years ago. But I don’t want to move on. I don’t want to forget. And don’t you ever try to tell me otherwise, or tell me that moving on doesn’t mean forgetting, or that classic ‘he would want you to’, because it’s not going to change my mind, and it’s going to show how much you don’t understand what it is to lose someone, and it’s probably going to make me hate you.
I’m running out of words. I don’t know what else to say. It’s just that I want to let him know so much that I am never, ever, going to let go. Even if it kills me. Because he deserved to be remembered. Even though my mother and brother don’t think it important to. I don’t blame them.
Daddy I miss you terribly.
