It’s December 13th. I remember earlier this year, before Ireland or the fall semester, thinking that soon enough it would be the year’s end I would wonder where the time went.

Where has the time gone?

It’s been a month since it really happened. Yesterday it was a month, today it’s a month and a day. I’m not counting, but you remember when it’s a month — two months, three — and soon enough it’ll be a year and I’ll wonder where the time went.

I threw away the rest of the flowers. They should have been thrown out sooner, but I couldn’t do it. It was a mix of putting it off and just not wanting to. It moved the events further into the past. But my feelings and emotions don’t feel like they’ve been moved into the past and so I left the flowers in their waterless vases. And I wrote a poem about how “watching the flowers slowly fade away reminded me of watching you slowly fade away” and the poetry class seemed to like that one, or at least they pretended because maybe they felt bad. My professor liked it. And I really liked it. Those last two matter more I guess.

A month.

And yet… it still feels strange some days.

The thought of you up there is supposed to be comforting. But all it does it make me cry because I see you whole and well and full of life and I wish I could better remember you like that down here. But my memory of my childhood isn’t very good or vivid. And my memory of good moments is failing me often so that mostly I remember that one fight when you slept on the couch after or the time you fell while I was watching you and the way your eyes looked so afraid.

Tonight’s thoughts and feelings were set off by something trivial. Something I wish you were here to be protective and fake mad over. Though I know it’s something you would have probably never known of. I guess I’ve had a lot of time to think of things I wish I had a Dad for, mostly silly and unnecessary.

My Poetry Workshop teacher passed this out and we read it in class today. I fell a little in love with his words.

On Living by Nazim Hikmet

I

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example–
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people–
even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees–
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II

Let’s say you’re seriously ill, need surgery–
which is to say we might not get
from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast …
Let’s say we’re at the front–
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We’ll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind–
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.

III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet–
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space …
You must grieve for this right now
–you have to feel this sorrow now–
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived” …

I’m tired.

Two weeks ago Mum said the end was near and Charles drove up and I came home for the afternoon.

The next day, Friday, he ate and stabalized. Charles went home.

Sunday Mum said the nurse said he couldn’t eat anymore because he couldn’t swallow properly.

It would probably be this week.

Last Monday Charles came back and we stood around Dad’s bed and said goodbye.

On Tuesday he was still here.

A week ago, on Thursday, I asked for an update and Mum said it could be an hour or six, but no one knew.

A week ago at 11:06 at night you breathed for the last time.

I didn’t sleep well Thursday night.

I didn’t cry till Friday. I wrote something to you by a lake. I was exhausted that night.

I slept in on Saturday. Had a short family dinner that night with Dad’s brothers. I cried a lot Saturday night.

I slept in on Sunday. We all gathered to remember Dad, the good only. Melissa read what I wrote to him. She read something she wrote for Sarah and I, and it made me cry a lot. People came and supported us. People I will never forget for it. I had a lifegiving conversation at 1am. I was feeling sad and he told me of how he had come alive recently, and he spoke truth into my life at the right moment.

I slept in on Monday. I didn’t go to work. I went to school because I had to. The teachers knew. I had dinner with three of my best friends. I came home and went to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep in on Tuesday. I had two cups of coffee in the morning and a lot of catching up at work. I had another coffee during Spanish and another my cousins brought me when they came for dinner. I love my cousins. Tuesday night dinner was delicious.

I woke up exhausted on Wednesday. Coffee. Annoying authors. I almost cried in poetry class again. Four and a half hours at Starbucks: free drink, organized life, found his obituary to prove my excuse for missing classes, wrote some of a paper. Tijuana Flats and a Spanish oral presentation recording. I wanted to go to sleep earlier.

I woke up tired again. Is it Thursday already? Coffee. Work and errands. Last day at Boys Town was the best. I had dinner with Stephanie. We talked about each other’s lives. No one is exempt from pain in life. I think I’m going crazy. I don’t want to do homework, I just want to go to sleep… it’s been such a long week… or two.

Tomorrow, I just want to go to work and school and then sit at a coffeeshop and finish my homework. And then I want to sit in the company of good friends… or I want to sleep.

I still want my life to mean something.
But right now I’m exhausted in a few ways… still.

I’ve been learning a lot these past couple of weeks. From the time I was sitting at Panera with Lori and Casey when got the first text that it looked like it was coming to an end, to the moment I was sitting at Chili’s with Scott, Lori, Aaron, and Liz when I got the text that he had passed.

There’s a lot to learn in these times. In any particularly good or bad time in life, there’s something to be taken from it, something to be added to your story.

It is a time of grieving. It doesn’t matter how “good” a person can appear to be doing and it doesn’t matter the circumstances surrounding someone’s death, it is a time of grieving and processing nonetheless. I have to remind myself that everyone doesn’t get that, it doesn’t make sense to everyone the way I handle things compared to the way they may handle things.There are moments I joke about it and there are moments I’d rather laugh then think too much about it all. But there are certainly moments I am sad. There are moments I look back before I knew what Korsakoff syndrome was and before dementia meant anything to me, and I miss what was and what could have been. Sometimes I sit in those thoughts and moments for awhile, sometimes I let myself cry while hanging out with friends. But eventually I pick myself back out of those thoughts and that feeling and I throw myself back into His arms of love. And sometimes I need to be thrown.

It’s those arms that have carried me through the past few years and it’s those arms that are carrying me now.

Life’s been a bit overwhelming. Tomorrow I begin to get back into the swing of things. There are plenty of other thoughts in my head. So many people I want to hug and thank and tell them getting through this was made just a little easier because of them. The text messages, the prayers, the flowers, the time spent to drive to Deland, the friends who came to the memorial service… I want to thank you a thousand times individually and I hope to at least a couple more times… but for right now in this moment: Thank you… thank you, thank you, thank you…

No weeping, no hurt or pain, no suffering, You hold me now
No darkness, no sick or lame, no hiding, You hold him now

Your kingdome come, Your will be done
here on Earth as it is in heaven

—-

I wrote this while sitting by a favorite lake on Friday afternoon. It wasn’t for the service, but Melissa ended up reading it for me today at the memorial service:

When I think of you, I don’t want to remember these past four or so years. When I think of you, I want to remember when I learned how to use a telephone and I’d call you at work to say “hi” and “I love you”. I want to remember the Saturday nights of wings and fries and British comedies. How you’d laugh at Hyacinth and Mr. Peacock, your whole belly shaking to the rhythm of your laugh. I want to rememebr all of the soccer games. The looney tunes and ice cream after dinner.

I remember you tucking me in when Sarah and I still shared a room. And the good trips to Barbados. When we stayed near the Crane and you’d walk there barefooted and easily get down the rocks that led to our favorite beach. You and Sarah bodysurfed, but I balled up in the beginning and gave up. I remember visiting Uncle Steven and the way he made you and the rest of us laugh and laugh. I remember when I couldn’t stop crying at Uncle Hugo’s funeral and you put your hand on my knee and told me it’d be okay. I remember going to your office before the Christmas parade and playing solitaire and eating candy I found in your desk.

I could remember these past four years — the ups, the downs, the anger, sadness, bitterness, confusion… But it doesn’t matter anymore. So I’ll remember you being you, my father, calling me “rabbit” or “rab” or “bit”. I’ll remember you alone, not the you accompanied by the illness. Here’s to the good…

Poem 1:
He came to mind

I was laying in bed.
for a late afternoon nap
My eyes moistened and my throat tightened up
just as quickly as the thought
entered my wandering mind.

We did not expect you to still be alive
this Thanksgiving
or this Christmas

And some days, I can forget it all together.

But today
before I can give in to my late afternoon slumber,
I am forced to rid you from my mind
by way of the tears
running
running
running
over my left cheek,
onto the pillow

and when I awake
they will be dried up
like the thought of you possibly
remembering me.

Poem 2:
Time’s Up: Go

“Think it over, think it through, then you’ve got to let it go.
Think it over. Okay, time’s up, go. Youv’e got to let it go.”
-Castledoor

I hate packing. 
I hate leaving.
I hate getting used to something 
and then
leaving.

Doing something I’ve been doing regularly
for the last time:
one last shower,
last walk through the gate,
last afternoon coffee and cards,
last lunch at this table,
last turn off of the light.

To not say goodbye forever
I keep a receipt,
a photo, a ticket,
a napkin,
a piece of a pizza box
to

remember.

But no receipt or photo
or ticket or napkin or pizza box
can bring back a moment.
in full.

Poem 3:
I Used to Expect the Worst When My Mother Called

A good moment to hear the news:
Picnic by a lake with friends,
a cool breeze, shade.
Someone to hold me when I,
if I broke down.

A phonecall was unexpected.
I had forgotten
the way my insides trembled
when I answered
expecting the end:

Rachel, it is over.
Four years of fighting
and his body has given up,
he has passed.

Only Mum didn’t say that,
in fact, she made no mention of Dad,
but of a childhood friend
coming out of drug addiction.

Poem 5:
The Problem

She imagines:
him,
your death,
a car accident to beautiful music,
falling in love.

Would he still be cute with different hair?
I’m ready.
Not during this song.
Your southern accent doesn’t make you
a southern gentleman.

But that’s the problem.
Her imagination
and the “What if?” of it all.
Because no one can live up to
her dreams and expecations.

I bought Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt today. I wandered around Barnes & Noble for a little while before I made my way to the biography section to find the memoir. It made me want to take only three classes next semester and read other books of my choice for the fourth “class”. Why not?

I went to Starbucks after Barnes & Noble. My grande cappuccino was almost free, but David didn’t tell the guy at the register in time. The cappuccino brought me back to other places — to the Gloria Jean’s in Edgecliff, to a cafe in Belfast. I started Angela’s Ashes with no idea what it was about and was happy to realize it was about an Irish childhood. Knowing what little I know about Irish history will make this book much more interesting and understandable.

While I was reading, the cappuccino hadn’t kicked in and I had trouble keeping my eyes open. I almost gave in and put my head down. Instead, I took out some paper and began writing to wake myself up. I used to be honest when I wrote, or just ambiguous enough so some people knew what I was talking about or others wondered if I was talking about them. I rarely meant for it to be that way, it just sort of happened. Lately, I miss the honesty that writing can handle. And I miss letting myself get carried away with words at a coffee shop. Don’t worry, it’s not about you:

Today feels big. It’s a big, important day. And it’s not about me. It’s about a man following God’s…

But that was Sunday. Today is Wednesday. Today feels smaller than Sunday, but bigger than Monday. Today I cried from the horrible pain of the cramps assocated with menstruation. It was worse than ever (I’ve rarely had problems with this sort of thing and I’d like to think I have a high pain tolerance), so I skipped class and went home after FedEx. I changed out of my skirt and got into bed. But before I could do that, I went to the barthroom. The pain was ever present despite taking medicine. I sat on the toilet, and soon enough, my head was on my knee and tears were falling down my leg. It felt terribly low, crying on a toilet.

But then I got into bed. A sad song was playing from my stereo, Sun Kil Moon’s cover of “Ocean Breathes Salty”: “You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste death?” And my eyes, the ones I dried with my towel in the bathroom, began to water again, spreading their emotions to my pillow and sheet. And I kept crying. Why? For the pain, for my dying father, for the lack of a male friend/relative present in my life who looks out for me or offers to beat someone up just to make me feel better, for another failed attempt, another “It’s not you, it’s me.” For the sake of letting my emotions out, I cried. (I could have stopped after the pain, but once you start, sometimes you just want to get the crying over everything else out of the way too).

Soon, after a few songs, I felt exhausted from all of the hushed crying. So I slept. For at least eight minutes I was out. then my sister called and a text from Casey came in while her phonecall was still ringing. I didn’t answer the phone or respond to the text. I wanted to go back to sleep. But the suspiciously nauseas (I never really get nauseas and I don’t know what it’s like, I wasn’t sure what my body was doing) feeling was gone. I was hungry and I needed vitamins. before I took care of that I called my sister back, morning voice at 2:15pm. Then I responded to Casey, lazily still lying down — though managing to send a longer than necessary text as usual.

I got out of bed. It was inevitable. A life half asleep in bed is not the life I want to live. It’s not the life I want to write about or remember in ten years.
I wiped my face with my hands. I looked into the miror, wiping my eyes, hoping to erase the last hour of life from my physical appearance.
It’s hard to erase those emotions (as unnecessary and random as they may have come on) so quickly. Your eyes won’t have it. They need time to readjust. Your brain too.

I was thinking about motivation today. Casey was talking to me recently about motivation and how he finds it interesting to know what motivates people. How different everyone’s motivation is.

At the beginning of the service on Sunday we were told to ask “What moves you?” to someone we didn’t know. I had no answer. I awkwardly stood there after the other girl answered. I know what makes me cry. But what moves me?

Motivation and moving.
I’m thinking about both today.
Maybe, I could have said, “I am moved by seeing people who were once so insecure and fearful learn to love themselves. And to then see that person able to freely love others, and so importantly, accept other’s love in different ways.” I guess I could have said, “I am moved by love.” But maybe, that’s just in this moment or that’s just a good answer. But if I think about it, like I have done since Sunday, then I admit that it is a true answer.
Why are we afraid to say what we think or feel just because it may be a cliche and common answer?

Motivation? I’m still thinking about that.

“The motive is love. Love of God and of my fellow man.”
-Don Miller

I used to write a lot.
I used to love more.
I used to reflect on life and love and relationships more.

I read over a few things I had written in the past two years and I wondered where that girl went. Where’s the girl who wrote about the Creator of Love and the idea of loving herself first and therefore loving others better? Where’s the girl who chose to speak with intentionality? Where’s the girl who made friends with fellow coffee shop regulars? Where’s the girl who could have one conversation with someone and make it meaningful? Where’s the girl who fell in love with herself? The girl who found the differences in us all beautiful?

I miss that girl. Perhaps most of that girl was in my head, maybe on paper, but rarely lived out. Perhaps she was trying to get out, learning how to live. Perhaps I gave up too soon.

I want to find the traces of that girl that remain somewhere buried beneath my cynicism and laziness. Beneath the condescending tone there is beauty (in us all).

I know I’m far off. But aren’t we all at some point?
I guess that’s my motivation.

Today I felt sleepy. As though at any moment, a blink could turn into a nap.

At work I felt productive: 30 boxes labeled, packed, and ready to go out. That’s a lot of lifting when you don’t feel awake yet.

After work, the afternoon was comprised of moments of “I can’t do this” or “I’m not up for this.” I should have chosen a better writing exercise for my part of the Boys Town writing workshop. And I should have prepared better for the Spanish in class composition.

Sometimes encouragement comes from unexpected people at unexpected times.

Social situations, from the latter part of last night through to early evening, have been comprised of mostly nodding and laughing. My mind has been in many places, past and future but lacking in the present. And the pitty conversation is something I don’t have time to entertain in order to make you feel good.

“Live in the depth of the moment.”

Every once in awhile, I need a good cry. Generally, I can think about this past year- about the family drama or about my father in general, I can think about childhood friends. One of those can set me off and usually in the end, I find myself still crying because I think about Dad. Which is silly, in a way, because you’d think I would have drained that part of my emotions at least a year or two ago. It’s nothing new, it’s nothing I want or need sympathy for. It just is. And I’ve become okay with that. But sometimes people need to cry.

Life! It’s exhausting. And exciting.

I have finished my tea, which for tonight means I’m going to sleep.

Because You’re with me, I will not fear.

And I remember this feeling.

2006.
2007.
2008.
2009…

It returns less and less. Soon it will be only a feeling I remember feeling.

Or will it ever?

The feeling of being so little and yet so huge, disgusting and yet no different than this morning.

How did we get so screwed up in the perception of ourselves?

For a lonely soul you’re having such a nice time-

But then. . .