Home isn't home anymore

     I wake every more still expecting to hear your voice or the sound of the TV letting me know you were awake. I look outside at the yard and remember the times I would watch you mow the yard, sometimes being woken by the sound of the lawnmower as it passed my window.

     I look at the garrage and remember how you would sit out there for hours just piddling. How neat everything was and now all I see is a mess. I'm told it will be cleared out and it will look as it did, but then in the next breath how things will be added so your son - my brother - can have a man cave. Not that I care, but another sign that everything is changing and will never be the same again.

    I walk into your room and I see someone else's things, but still remember when your things were there and my heart aches. I have what few clothes you had hanging in my closet and I can still smell your scent on them.
 
    I wore your tan jacket a couple of times - the one you always wore and you gave to me just before you closed your eyes for good - and I could smell your scent on that as well. It brought me so much comfort, but it made me miss you that much more. Than I realized if I kept wearing it that I would lose that smell and so I have it safely tucked in my closet with the rest of your things.  I have your personal effects in that storage foot stool I bought for you.  Not long after your passing I was looking through the box you gave me and I found the letters you left for us. I can't tell you how much that meant finding them. It was as  if you were still watching over us all.

   As I walk around the house, I see everything as it was when you were here, but changing now. Someone's else things lie around and makes the house I once called ours someone elses. It's so hard to watch these changes, but knowing they are necessary. I want things as they were, but know they never will be again.

   I try to go on with my life, to find meaning in it once again, but it seems to be eluding me. Talking about you is not an option. It is too painful for everyone else who loves you and so I keep my feelings bottled up inside me.

     When I pull in the driveway now that sense of home is gone and I know it is just a place for me to lay my head. I have lost my sense of purpose, my pillar of strength and I know I will never have that again.

       In essence, what I am trying to say is...I love you and Miss you.  I promised you the night you left that I would be OK and I will, it will just take a little more time. In the meantime I will continue to remember you doing what you enjoyed.

                                                             

                                                                 I LOVE YOU DAD!!!

Changes

I have wiped my Dad's name out of existence and him as well or so it feels to me. 

I went to the tag office and transferred the title of the car from my Dad's name to mine - at the cost of 608.38, but on the upside I will only have to pay twenty dollars a year for my tag for now on - then I went to the bank and took his name of the account. 

I know these are all necessary things, but I feel as if I am losing him all over again. With going with the new plan on Vehicle taxes I received the new Ga tag - again something under my father's name changed. I have kept the old tag - I took the stamp off - and it now sits in my room.

It probably seems silly to most that I would hold on to something like a tag, but to me it's just another sign that my father is truly gone. 

In a way it feels as if his passing as been longer than it actually has been. In reality he has only been gone a little over a month - the fourth of August will be two. 

I try to remember what Dad wanted and I have done the best I can, but on days like today where I have to remove another thing that showed he lived...Well, it's hard not to ball up in a ball and cry. So, I will just cry and try to remember that even though his physical presence is no longer here, his memory is and it always will be with me.

I went through this process once before many years ago with my mother. I was much younger than and I thought I had lost everything the day she passed away, but I found out that I always had my father and I am grateful for the years he was always there. There is a huge whole where my heart use to be - it may take another thirty years again for me to accept his passing as it did with my mother.

I will try and remember as well that my parents are once again together - in some way. 

I miss them both so very much.

April

It's the Little Things

A carton of Neapolitan ice cream, an semi-empty room where a bed should be, the view of a front yard or back patio, a dinning room table that feels empty now, a recliner in a living room that now remains empty, a picture on a wall that once meant so much.

It's these little things that remind me of the emptiness I feel inside where I once stood whole. It's the little things that remind me that the father I loved so much is no longer here.

I know from experience that this pain and loss I feel will ease, but never really go away. I have been through this before so many years ago with the loss of my mother, but I was much younger then and I had my father to turn to.

Now who do I turn to? I keep all these feelings bottled up within, because I know others are feeling the loss as well, especially my youngest brother. He always counted on our father to be there when he needed him, rather it was just to talk or sit by his bedside from a accident that almost took my brother's life. Dad wore himself out so much so he couldn't even speak.

That was the kind of man he was, unselfish in every way.

I looked through his belongings and saw how little he did have. He gave everything to us. He made sure we had a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs. He put his life on the line in two wars and served over twenty eight years in the military - Navy and Army combined.

He taught us how to stand on our own two feet, but never failed to catch us when we fail.

It's the little things that I miss the most.

April