legacy...

Sympathy certainly has many forms and faces. Today I was getting my car inspected and my oil changed before work. I brought my car to the local shop that my whole family has used for years. My brother knows the mechanics there very well, and as such frequent customers, we are known by name. As I was waiting for them to finish up, with the sounds of hydrolic machines and gears clinking in the background, the guy at the front desk paused in the middle of his nonchalant chatter and said how sorry he was about my dad. That right there would have been enough. That's where most people stop. But instead, he went on...and on...and on. 'He was just too young. I'm almost that old. At least he went fast - that's a good thing. But just too young.' Okay, bud. Just stop. Thanks for your condolences and I get it. Trust me, if anyone knew my father passed away too early, I do. But who are we to say when someone has completed their mission here on earth? How can we really say he was too young? To me? Yes. I feel like I didn't have nearly enough time with him. That I'm going to miss him in so many more moments in life. That I feel like he should have been allowed to stay with us for many, many years. But...it's not up to me. He had a purpose. God saw fit that he'd completed that purpose - and completed it well - and it was time to go home. Do I have a hard time understanding it? Of course. Many, many times I've wished to turn back time. To press the rewind button. But life moves forward. The surreality of it all is still so hard to swallow and some days I actually have to remind myself that he isn't coming back. And I get sad, my eyes tear up and all I want to do is curl up in bed and cry for days and days. But we were lucky for the time we did have. For the memories we'll have forever. For the values, the faith and the morals we've had taught to us that will be taught to our children and so on. He may not be physically living, but he is still living on through us and everything that we do. And for that, I can be happy.

hole...

"You have to stop thinking of it like that."

Somehow it's like a broken record. That day...all things horrible about that day...play over and over and over. How the morning began with all the simple signs of normalcy and then...my world came crashing down. Of course since then I've reached out and taken those offered hands to help me back up. I've dusted myself off, greeted each new day with purpose, and yet those flashes of dark memories continue to wander in like curling thunder clouds. The storm can only be abated so long until I inevitable break.

I try so hard to think of the good things. The happy times. The joyful memories. But somehow they're shadowed by the anticipation of fatherless holidays, a fatherless wedding, a fatherless life. The dwelling knowledge that I will get through this - we all will get through this - churns within me. I fight jealousy daily. So jealous of what everyone else has, dreams they can still wish on. I see fathers and daughters and swallow the lump in my throat, the painful desperate wish for just one more day.

This too shall pass.

prince...

I met you in a swirling crowd,
the sonata of a rumbling restaurant
the harmony for our first dance.
You took my hand in yours and
whisked me away to a dream
coming true.

We floated through seasons,
time and space. Whirling snowflakes
and blossoming flowers converged in
a fairytale love. Whispers of
perfection enveloped us.

You led me to a world I
had only dreamed to know. An
essence of emotion my heart yearned
for finally bloomed in effervescing
fervor.

When I first took your hand, I
knew you would never let go.

shards...

I've heard it said that there are five stages to grief. I don't know what they all are, but I know anger is one of them.... I don't believe I'm quite there yet, but I feel it building. Churning, swelling. Like a bubbling black ooze that I'm struggling to swallow down, to hold at bay. Just one impulsive image continually comes to mind in which all that undirected misguided confused emotion could be unleashed. Running, arms extended open wide, through an antique store, screaming. The fragile pieces and collectibles - vases, tea cups, crystal, china - stacked and cluttered against the walls, on tables, along the floor. As I run through, it all inevitably falls crashing to the ground in a euphoric symphony of catastrophic destruction. To hear something else experience the overwhelming incapacitation of being broken.

I keep moving forward. My life is continuing on and happiness charges in like a white night when I think about all the good things I have and will have and have had. It's a constant battle...