As I lit my green candle, and settled into bed with left over pizza and the dogs, it strikes me again, as it does several times a day: "My dad is dead." And some part of me pushes the thought away as quickly as it arises. I feel a rising tide of images - some visual, some sensory - of my dad. His scratchy cheek as he gives me a quick kiss. The warmth of his skin under his dress shirt that last day I saw him. I see his hands - fingers slightly bent from arthritis as they clutch a can of Diet Coke.

And I shove the thoughts violently away from the center of my mind into the recesses, where they can gather strength to attack me again tomorrow.

I wipe the flood of tears from my face, blow my nose, and try again.

I open the book of travel stories and try to accompany Catherine as she shoots the rapids on the Colorado River. Some of these stories I recognize from our week together at the Split Rock writing retreat. She didn't read her stories, but she would share them with the group as we traded our own stories amongst ourselves. Ever supportive, she left a lasting impression on me as a person of great strength and kindness. I like to think I share some of those qualities, but I doubt that I will ever share her prolific writing abilities.



I can't focus. An unmedicated victim of ADD no doubt. I made some cups with goats on them tonight and threw a birdhouse while I listened to "Unbroken" on CD. I read for a bit, wrote for a bit, cried for a while, filled the dog's water dish and meditated on this weird mole that seems to be growing at a disconcerting clip. My doctor says we should do something about it, but some dark and morbid part of me hopes that it will just consume me and let me off the hook from all the grief that I feel now, and that I know that I will face in the future. I realize that to anyone outside my brain, this seems horrifying and ridiculous, but it brings me a sort of comfort. Probably something my therapist would have loved to work with, though I'm sure it wouldn't have surprised her.

The dog came in from the cold, but it seems to have settled in her feet and her ears because she's burrowing her frosty little body into my leg, trying to get as close to the electric blanket as she can. She's given up her bobbing and weaving and is quiet now because the pizza is gone and there's no hope for her of getting even a smackerel and she knows it.




And as I sit here thinking of other things, there's a guy in my head with a little poker keeping that other voice away.

"He's dead."
I know.
Shut up.

It seems truly impossible. Unbelievable. I think if I just stay here, and NEVER look back, it will be like it's not there. This truth. This unbearable reality. The guy with the poker replies, "He CAN'T be. You don't know this guy. He doesn't die. It's just not something he would do." And I get the newsreel with the images of him in the garage a few months ago, handing me boxes of tiles and saying, "What are you going to do with all these?" He offers me a diet pop, which I decline, and invites me to sit on the couch. We are roaming the isles at Home Depot. Sitting at Arby's. And again I can't take it and I weep.



But it's not enough to cry. It doesn't fix anything and it doesn't make me feel better. He's still dead and I'm still sad. And even the word doesn't seem big enough to encompass this loss. And THAT word, LOSS, doesn't seem big enough either.

Next weekend I jump into a frozen lake. And I've gone from ridiculing the idea, to dreading it, to thinking, "Good. That will be a feeling that's totally new and which will seriously take my mind off this OTHER horrible feeling for a while." Like the only thing that could possibly divert me from the sudden flashes of realization that he's dead is to have a sudden flash of my own mortality. And maybe I'll have a heart attack and drown. That would also be distracting.

Sometime in the days before Dad died, I remember thinking with surprise that the depression that had gripped me for years seemed to be really gone. I felt anxious, sure, but not that clawing darkness that hovered in the background even when it wasn't actively gripping me. And now, it's back. Skirting around, trailing me like a shadow. Making it hard to be alone with my thoughts.


I was trying to find a poem today on my computer and came across one that I'd written about my dad just a year or two ago. And it's funny because I have a lot of them.

Anyway, I'm tired and now I'm going to put some lotion on my clay-dried hands and go to sleep. Tomorrow is Sunday, which means breakfast and crossword, which I always like.