I write because nothing else makes sense

From you I learned that the pen is mightier than the sword.  Maybe that’s why I’ve poured so much of myself into wielding that particular instrument with precision.  Now I can’t recall, only that somewhere along the way, I fell in love with words and the things they could do. 

When she died, I used my words to cut into my soul, let the pain bleed into words.  The scars eventually healed and faded.  It’s not very recognizable now.  I was stunned when you left.  You were supposed to come back.  Little girls who put their fathers on pedestals are disappointed when the first realize their hero is becoming tarnished with age.  Yet, we love you like when you were young and undefeatable.  You are our hero, our superman, our prince charming, the one who keeps our world spinning on its axis. 

When we grow up we learn that you were just the great wizard behind the curtain and all we ever had to do was will ourselves into our own happily ever after.  First we had to find the courage to walk down the yellow brick road that would lead to your citadel. 

I thought I could do this, talk about you.  It seems when I use my words, the cuts I make are deeper and the pain doesn’t pour, it gushes out.  I do not know how to do this, live in a world where you don’t laugh or where I can’t call your name, the one I called you my whole life.  My tongue has fallen silent.  My memory replays the last time I saw your face, laughing from the other side of the world.  I don’t understand how you could simply fall silent, close your eyes, and draw your last breath. 

I don’t understand the sound that filters through the phone, breaking through the fog of sleep after a week of troubled sleepless nights.  I don’t understand the tears I hear or the familiar voice, or the words that she utters.  The words don’t feel real.  How can you be dead?  Dead as a doornail; deader than Marley’s ghost.  They show me a body.  It’s a live video.  In this day and age of instant information, gigabytes that travel faster than the speed of light, how is that dead body lying there on the slab yours?

Why are you gone?  No one answers me.  I hate this.  I hate how much of my life revolved around you.  Should I have loved you less?  Knowing you’d one day leave me is far different now that you’re actually gone.  I close my eyes and I see you, sitting there the morning after I gave birth to your first grandson, while I tried to sleep.  His father had to take him to NICU.  My mother went home to get some rest.  I managed to get some sleep that morning only because every time I opened my eyes, you were sitting right there beside me in the dark. 

I see you again beside my hospital bed, holding your last grandson, the one who misses you every day, the one who prays for you every day even though you are dead.  He is the most like you I think. When he laughs it is pure joy.  They make the pain ease until the next time your memories start haunting me.  Maybe it’s better to hide behind this wall of silence because at least I can smile from back here and pretend I’m not broken beyond repair.

Life after death

I'm not sure how to talk about my father's death.  Maybe a man who's the father of a daughter will understand what it means to be daddy's little girl.  Do you ever stop being her even if you both age?  I'm not sure.  Sometimes I wonder what went through his mind in that moment when his heart finally called it quits.  Was he elated that his time had finally arrived and he would now be with the woman he loved with his entire heart and soul?  Or did he think of us, his children, or me?  I'm inclined to think he might have been elated and I can't hold that against him.  He was never quite the same after she died.  When he came back from burying her thousands of miles away in his childhood home, near the house he had built for her, something of him had been left behind, buried in the dirt along with her remains.  He was never exactly the father I knew.  He stopped being him the moment she died.  But I wonder if he even knew or understood that?  His faith sustained him but I don't think his heart was ever in it.

Now he's gone.  I move through his house, his office, his life trying to move forward.  My feet moves my body but my mind just wonders, lost among the remnants of his life.  I've had my heart broken before, but never by my father.  I'm pretty sure that this time its permanent.  I have my good days and my bad.  Today was a neutral day, neither good nor bad.  I spent the weekend playing with dirt.  His dirt.  The dirt in his garden.  I had my husband dig up those damn rose bushes I had wanted my father to remove but he never did.  Well they are now gone.  He put the one rosebush that I liked in a barrel planter which we stuck in the middle of what used to be my father's vegetable garden.  His neighbor commented on how he used to take advantage of the good weather to get an early start on his garden.  I hate the fact that his garden is ready and waiting for him but he's never coming back to work on it.  Or the fact that his seeds are waiting in the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom, labeled by the year they were harvested, waiting for him to plant them.  I hate how this whole thing paralyzes me.

Death.  How odd that my children and I talk about it like anything else?  I can't melodramatically tell my son that I am dying of thirst because he points out to me that he hasn't had a drink all day and he's not dead.  My four year old plays with his Flash action figure and we finally notice because he declares in a loud voice to the entire room that the Flash is dying from cancer.  He prays for his "Dadu" but he's dead and then he prays for his Grammy Egg and Grand Ian because they are alive.  I had to tell my oldest son off today because he was hungry but refused to eat.  I told him I will not tolerate the eating habit he picked up from his grandmother because I will be damned if he's going to starve himself to death.  Maybe I was exaggerating a bit but he understood me only too well.  This is where we are.  I have no idea where we will go from here or how.

This is the last place I ever imagined being.  

How I'm Really Doing...

Don’t ask me if I’m ok because the answer is obvious, I’m not.  I might be smiling but on the inside I’m numb, shell shocked, barely comprehending that your mouth is moving and you’re speaking to me.  Don’t tell me it’s going to be all right.  It will, eventually but that doesn’t mean its ok now.

Sometimes, I just cry.  I don’t need a reason.  Maybe you could stop staring uncomfortably at everything except me.  I’m human.  I’m in pain.  Just because you pretend not to see it doesn’t mean it has gone away.

I’m not okay.  I will never be okay.  Accepting God’s plan and purpose for your life doesn’t mean you’ll ever be okay.  It just means the walk of faith is uncomfortable.  Don’t pity me.  I’ve been blessed enough for many life times.  Save it for those who truly need it. 

I am weary.  My tears have worn me to the bone.  Who will carry my burdens and let me rest my head?  Will you?  Will he, she, or it?  Will they?  So why do you waste your breath, precious oxygen to ask me if I’m ok when the answer is obvious as the nose on your face.  I will never be okay again.