So we went to look for a place to move into this weekend. I started the day out in a pretty sour mood. I can only blame myself for this, as I had gone to bed too late and with my head too sloshy from whatever I’d been drinking. I tend to be pretty childish sometimes, and I forgot that when you’re house/apartment searching, it does take time and it does take coordinating with other people. People whose schedules may or may not mesh with yours. So there’s waiting and coordinating and pow-wowing to do, and I’m not a patient person. When I want something, I want to see results. Fast. So I was crabby. When I say I’m still psychologically eight years old at times, I wish I was joking. So I tend to realize sometimes I still have some growing up to do.

We found a house downtown in the historic area, in a neighborhood that may as well be called Suburbia, USA, surrounded by other houses that were just as old and just as amazing. The house was exactly as I had imagined it, with wood flooring and that ancient feel to it. The floors have a thud to them when they’ve been around a while. The house smells vaguely musty like an old library. The revamping that’s been done to the house doesn’t take away from the vintage feel of it, and so I’ve got my hopes up that this goes through, because I feel like this would be a good home for a while.

So sitting around later that night back at Jeff’s place, I had a conversation with Dad. Thanks for putting me through my first years of college and providing me with some of the tools I’ll need in the coming years. And what terrible timing to have left us all before we were ready to let you go. We still need you and miss you. Yes, we’ll survive. I’ve got a full-time job and my first car and hopefully soon, a nice little place that seemed to have been built out of my own imagination. However, that doesn’t take away the feeling that it still wasn’t the time and it just wasn’t right. Thanks for helping to shape me into the person that I am today. Thanks for leaving me with some of your best qualities. Thanks for being my role model and setting the bar high in the caliber of man to look for.

But it’s hard to think about a world without Dad in it. Nature abhors a vacuum, huh? Well, this vacuum is going to take a while to fill. I think the reason some little place in the back of my mind refuses to believe he’s gone is that he’s not actually gone. His body has relocated to somewhere else, but I feel like he’s still keeping an eye on me wherever I go. So these days, instead of making a phone call or calling out hello as I come in the door, I’m getting into the habit of just saying whatever it is I want to say to him and hoping that on some level he’s getting the message. I don’t particularly believe in heaven on any level. But I do hope that when the end of MY life comes, I’ll be able to say hi to my good old Dad again.

So, if we manage to get into that neat old house downtown, the first thing I’m going to think is, see this, Dad? Look at my house. Look at what I have done. Couldn’t have done it without ya.

I’m coming around. I’ve given up on the tears (except when a little drunk) and settled for the continuous stomach ache in my brain and ridiculous wish that one day I’ll turn around and there he’ll be. I guess it was right that the casket stayed closed for the funeral, because in my mind’s eye I’ll always remember my last image of Dad as he was; strong and healthy as a horse, leukemia be damed! And always with a smile (sometimes bemused when dealing with ME) on his face. And on that note, good night.

-j

I don’t really know what made me snoop through the closet and the drawers. I miss Dad, so I think I wandered in there looking for bits of him still lying around. None of his shirts smell like him, but I took two of them anyway, folded them up and hid them away along with a few other bits and bobs. It made me feel a little better.

I tell people about it and barely bat an eyelash. I was expecting something more raw than the emotions I’ve actually been experiencing, something like a horrible, gut-wrenching breakdown. But that’s never happened. We all process in different ways, they say. And it feels more to me like it stays pretty well smothered most of the time, then like a bad smell seeps back in and what I feel is this lonely, wistful, achy sadness.

Shelly is gone most of the time and it’s just me in the house. I’ve been taking advil pm in the evenings, earlier and earlier, and sleeping most of the time between shifts. There’s nothing really else to do. The weekend is here after tomorrow and all I can really think of that I want to do is sit around and put chemicals in myself to make up for the hard week.

And, that’s basically all there is to update.

-j

The last three nights or so in a row I’ve had dreams about Dad. And in every one, there he is, sitting there like nothing ever happened. He usually comes into the scene with someone else, and when I sit there flabbergasted, the person he entered with just shrugs. And then I wake up and forget all about the dream until I get home from work and my mind is able to quiet down for the evening.

My subconscious is not so easily fooled by the upper layers of my brain’s attempts to throw some sand over what must be eventually faced. While the voluntary parts of my brain process and crank out bits of usefulness during the day, when I’m dreaming my subconscious refuses to behave itself and pulls all sorts of fun stuff out of the closet. And lately, it’s been all Dad. My rational brain still believes it’s all a really bad joke and that Dad’s just out on some extended vacation. I wonder how long it’s going to take until my rational mind believes what the rest of it knows.

In the meantime, the pattern seems to be business and all manner of preoccupation during the day, and during the quieter times in the evening when the dishes are done and the leftovers put away, we each go to our seperate hiding spots of the house. And me, I have a drink or two and proceed with the waterworks.

It’s a horrible ache like I can’t even describe. You don’t actually feel it, but it’s still there, burning a hole in your insides that there’s really no cure for. I’d give just about anything right now just to have my dad back. That sounds really emo, but it’s the goddamned truth. There’s a vacuum in Me-land right now.

How could this ever have happened? We all needed him. Now what are we supposed to do? We’re all wandering around lost. Dad was stability and patience, and this world has lost all of its good things.

-j

It’s been a few days, and until Shelley returns on Tuesday, bringing with her the assorted family members sifting in from Chicago and hopefully Arkansas, it’s just me in this old house. I wander around the house wondering which of the various chores to take care of first I’ve been neglecting all week. A sink full of dishes soaking to be put into the dishwasher (I am in no mood to hand wash all of them), the plants and trees that need watering, the bird bath out back baking in the sun. The lawn got a #2 shave this afternoon, but the dust made me sneeze and I had to stop, so tomorrow’s chore is weedwacking around the edges. The evaporative cooling needs to be set up for the summer, something which neither Shelley or I have much knowledge on how to do. The floors, which are normally my only chore haven’t even been considered yet at this point.

Dad’s ghost follows me around the house, taking up space in all the spots Dad used to occupy, scattering his various belongings all over. The spot at the kitchen table and the rocking bench outside on the back porch. The bike shed and the laundry room with the collection of tools, saws and other doodads. That damned ghost is in the closet with all of his flannel shirts, the hiking boots and backpacking supplies all collecting dust. The big old motorcycle sits out on the back porch covered by a tarp, and one of the exhaust pipes is peeking out, reminding us that we can’t keep it hidden forever. Tuesday is coming, and with it, responsibilities, obligations, arrangements.

What will we do with all this stuff now? I don’t want to sell the Triumph. I want to take it with me wherever I go. And I don’t know if I want to stay in this house any longer than it takes to get Shelley settled wherever she wants to be, Prescott or elsewhere. There’s nothing left in this shell of a place anymore. The house even sounds like it’s aged a hundred years. It creaks even more than usual, seems drier, dustier than usual. This is not my home anymore.

I feel like a lost soul who doesn’t know what they’re looking for.

-j