Late-February Omnibus Post

I've settled into a boring, and perhaps financially unwise, pattern on my days off: I go to Starbucks, get a donut and a latte, and sit and correct English writing. It gets me out of the house – and walking, which is its primary benefit – but it's otherwise rote and uninspiring. And it itself is becoming depressing.

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I responded to an aunt of mine a week or so ago, and she hasn't replied. I resisted her desire to entomb some of my dad's ashes. The family also wants to create a physical memorial which I have no fundamental problem with. He'd find it perplexing; I just find it unneeded.

I do understand the impulse and tried to convey that. I wrote:

When I was a small kid my mom told me she didn’t want to be buried or to have a grave (the specifics don’t matter here), and I remember thinking how sad it would be to have no place to go. No place to sit and talk, to lay flowers, like my father so often had for [his own father] John. Because I loved her. It strikes me as less sad today, 300 years after that conversation.

The anecdote I used was probably bound to be misinterpreted and almost certainly was (and perhaps it should have been) as me calling them childish. I don't fully believe they are, but I also don't get why they won't just do what he wanted. I've already conceded to giving them some of his ashes to spread (something he actually resisted when I once brought it up, altho I suspect he wouldn't really mind).

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I miss the shit out of him.

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Sometimes – seemingly more and more often as the shock from the pain blurs into the background radiation of life (and loss) – I'll think of something he did or said (the way he would adorably announce "I gotta poo" each time he, well, needed to poo; when something happens that he'd enjoy hearing about; when a song he loves plays; any memory; and on and on) and it'll arrest me when reality interjects to remind me that he's gone. It still seems impossible; it remains a meanness, a cruelty, a deep – the deepest – cut.

And I still don't know how to cope with it.

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It's been 5 months and 4 days.

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Today, in America, is my mom's birthday.

I learned recently that her second husband, the asshole she married after she and my father divorced, also died last year. He was an abusive piece of shit, a lifelong alcoholic who lived entirely too long, and caused entirely too much pain. I only just learned of this; for me, it would've been damned near 2019's lone highlight. (So far, it is 2020's.)

But I feel badly for her: she was married twice and both of her ex-husbands died within months of each other, in the same calendar year. Even 2019's bright spots are occulted by suck.

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Trying to read more, I bought a used Kindle. I can't rationalize the cost of a new one – but I'll likely upgrade sometime next year, if I actually reestablish the habit. I like the way reading feels – especially how I feel after having read: more thoughtful, less emotional, calmer; my broken places slightly mended. More thinky; less ouchy.

We’ll see if I keep it up. I’ma walk home a long way and read for a little while. Then I gotta go meet a friend who’s passing thru town. Should be fun.

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It's been 5 months and 4 days.

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