The past is never dead. Its not even past.
when i close my eyes im somewhere with him. it could be anywhere. it could be driving in the falcon the first day we brought it home or what he looked like in his garage bent over his Triumph oil covering those beautiful strong hands of his. sometimes its him in the hospital and ill try to open my eyes right away to unsee it. but the thought lingers on. I dont like visiting him here but i dont get to pick our landscape. I see him as coach, as teacher, as patient and they all have their layers that i constantly peel through so as not to forget a single detail about him. in the midst of life we are in death. someone said that once. i feel the tug on my heart when I’m forced to refer to my parents’ house as my mothers. his motorcycles are now our bikes, his dog, is it still his dog? it goes like this. knowing that he no longer exists feels as though everything I once believed in has been proven false. I wish I could remember our last conversation. the one before the hospital. the last one, when life was simple, our last commonplace exchange. but I can’t. I have racked my brain, rewound it to all of the dirty moments I’d rather never have encountered back to April of last year but I can’t. I have begged the gods for it. it is the only time i do this besides when I beg to dream of him. I remember crawling into his hospital bed with him and snuggling up to him like I had done all my life on one couch or another. I remember staring at the white ceilings, listening to hospital sounds and thinking this can’t be it, this can’t be the end. But it was. I did not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. I know why I try to keep him alive, Im trying to to do this in order to keep him with me. I also know that if I am to live myself there comes a point at which I must relinquish the dead, let him go, keep them dead. But I am wired a certain way and not only do i mourn the loss of my fathers life everyday, I also mourn, for better or for worse, myself. as i was. as i am no longer. as i will one day not be at all.