dad

Well it's been... kind of a difficult couple of months. My dad died July 5. And my sister just found out that she has to put her cat down.
It's weird and I'm still processing it and I feel different and I know life is different forever now. It was my birthday the other day and I went to my mom's house and my dad's absence was a huge presence. It was like the elephant in the room. Things were kinda upbeat, and every now and then we'd mention him, something he used to say. But we didn't dwell, but sometimes I just wish we would dwell. I spent the summer with my sisters and we dwelled on it together, we cried and told stories and listened to his favorite music and cooked together and drank wine, lots of wine. Then I had to leave and it's weird and isolating being around friends and people who aren't going through this. I want people to talk to about it. It's a unique, acute, different kind of pain. It's something I've never experienced before. I have known people who have died before and that hurt. But when your father dies....it's completely its own thing. It makes you think, OK so... who in this family is next then? I only have one more parent now. My mom and that's it, no one else. She was telling my sisters and I when we were with her in July where the deed to the cemetery is for when we need it when she dies. And it's like...OK I guess that's a handy thing to know, but thinking about that gives me heart palpatations and a headache and a heartache. Things are different now forever. My dear ol man is gone. I even wrote him a letter the day before he passed away. Tears pouring out of me and dotting the paper as I wrote, I wanted to tell him all the things I never said out loud to him, things like how much I love him, how he used to say the exact perfect thing to me to make me feel better about myself, like how much he influenced my appreciation for music and noticing the subtle beauty of life, and how we would laugh and laugh together, we had the same sense of humor and we would encourage each other into fits of hysterical laughter. Then the next morning I went to the mailbox (I was in Cali at the time) and dropped it in the mail. Then an hour later my mom called us to tell us he was gone. My mom wanted my sister and I to be together to talk to us so I knew a phone call was coming but it was like that song, "Don't Speak" by No Doubt where she's like I know what you're saying so please stop explaining, don't tell me 'cause it hurts, I did not want to talk on the phone and I didn't want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to walk angrily down the street crying because I didn't want to face facts.
But then I flew to CT for the funeral and my younger sis and I met up with my two other sisters and mom, and then my letter arrived a couple days later and I stuck it in my dad's suit jacket he wore at the wake and now my letter is buried next to my dad's heart.
And now he's gone but in some ways, and maybe it's a coping mechanism but in some ways I know he's not gone, I know that love goes on and one thing I learned from all this is that you are not your body. And love is eternal and I know, deep inside that he shows up every day in my life and he will always be a part of me, I will always carry him with me, forever.