Winter is officially gone. Per usual, there was no gradual transition. It's cold, so cold you can't imagine what warm sunshine would feel like, and then almost the next instant it's so hot you're running to put your sweaty face in front of an air conditioning vent to cool off. And despite how quickly it happens, by the time the air is really hot and sticky, winter is such a distant memory that it almost doesn't feel real.
So all traces of winter are gone, and with it your death has receded into the realm of the surreal. It feels very much as if it never happened, and at the same time as if it happened just one minute ago, as if it is always happening. I haven't been writing to you lately. I'm very busy with work again, and when I'm not working I'm migraining. Usually, I'm doing both at the same time. My mind is lost in the world of cameras and cranes and red rock deserts and canyons as I prep for a shoot in Utah, and when I have a minute to think, I am consumed by migraine, which erases all thoughts and feelings other than a dull nausea and a general unease. It's almost impossible to feel any emotion other than misery during a migraine, and it's utterly impossible to envision the past or the future, to imagine what it feels like not to have a migraine.
But in the moments, in the very rare clear moments when I take a pause from my work and I don't have a migraine, I think of you, Dad. Always of you. You and your casual, happy demeanor. Your blue eyes, your gravelly voice, your stoicism. Don't talk about it, don't think about it. This was Mom's advice to me a few weeks ago when I burst into tears on the phone with her. I miss Dad, I had said. And we are all fighting our own private battles with grief, and for her at that moment she didn't want to let grief overcome her, so she shut down the conversation with "don't think about it, don't talk about it." If ever there was a motto for our family, that might have been it. There are so many things you didn't talk about, I wish I could have known more.
But more than that I wish you were here to enjoy the beginning of summer, to be elated by golf season getting back into swing (pun for your benefit). To work in the garden and open the pool and check the temperature every day. To seek compliments on how nice the pool and the yard look. To sit on the back deck, grill steaks and hamburgers on your barbecue. To ask who wants cheese and who doesn't on their burger, and then to forget and put cheese on all of them. To come home from a morning of golf and head up for your afternoon nap. To take drives out east with Mom. To celebrate Mother's Day with us tomorrow, and Father's Day in June, a day which I am dreading the approach of already.
Miss you, Dad. More than you know.
amy
So all traces of winter are gone, and with it your death has receded into the realm of the surreal. It feels very much as if it never happened, and at the same time as if it happened just one minute ago, as if it is always happening. I haven't been writing to you lately. I'm very busy with work again, and when I'm not working I'm migraining. Usually, I'm doing both at the same time. My mind is lost in the world of cameras and cranes and red rock deserts and canyons as I prep for a shoot in Utah, and when I have a minute to think, I am consumed by migraine, which erases all thoughts and feelings other than a dull nausea and a general unease. It's almost impossible to feel any emotion other than misery during a migraine, and it's utterly impossible to envision the past or the future, to imagine what it feels like not to have a migraine.
But in the moments, in the very rare clear moments when I take a pause from my work and I don't have a migraine, I think of you, Dad. Always of you. You and your casual, happy demeanor. Your blue eyes, your gravelly voice, your stoicism. Don't talk about it, don't think about it. This was Mom's advice to me a few weeks ago when I burst into tears on the phone with her. I miss Dad, I had said. And we are all fighting our own private battles with grief, and for her at that moment she didn't want to let grief overcome her, so she shut down the conversation with "don't think about it, don't talk about it." If ever there was a motto for our family, that might have been it. There are so many things you didn't talk about, I wish I could have known more.
But more than that I wish you were here to enjoy the beginning of summer, to be elated by golf season getting back into swing (pun for your benefit). To work in the garden and open the pool and check the temperature every day. To seek compliments on how nice the pool and the yard look. To sit on the back deck, grill steaks and hamburgers on your barbecue. To ask who wants cheese and who doesn't on their burger, and then to forget and put cheese on all of them. To come home from a morning of golf and head up for your afternoon nap. To take drives out east with Mom. To celebrate Mother's Day with us tomorrow, and Father's Day in June, a day which I am dreading the approach of already.
Miss you, Dad. More than you know.
amy
Let's be clear: only Mom doesn't want cheese on her burgers, and I feel fairly certain that Dad "forgot" that on purpose most of the time! She would then complain and scrape it off of hers.
ReplyDelete