The kitchen floor was green linoleum, softly textured with what looked vaguely like a combination of shamrocks and the card suit spades. The walls were covered with bright wallpaper - floral patterns of greens and yellows. The wallpaper filled inserts in the cabinets so that the entire kitchen had a rhythm that said, "Hi 70s. We're here." This was where goulash came from. Where dishes were washed, dried, and broken. Where we ate tomatoes with sugar on them. Where one day a wind storm blew a 2x4 through the window. Those windows, which we would duck and hide below, skulking out of the room when we'd see Chuck Knoss, the neighbor, coming across the back yard looking for Dad. We didn't want him to know we were there because Dad owed him money and didn't have it to repay.

That's where the McDonalds glass broken when someone put their hand inside to dry it. It sliced their finger and the blood gushed. We ran to the neighbor's house because Mary Duffy was a nurse. Oddly, I can't remember if it was my finger or Lynn's. I'm checking my pointer finger, and there is a scar where I would expect to find it...but was it from that day or another? I don't know.

That's where Lynn and I would regularly fight about whose turn it was to wash, and whose to dry. Once this argument ended with me bent backwards over the kitchen counter and Lynn holding a knife over me. At that point Dad burst into the room - drawn by the screaming no doubt - and broke it up.

This is the room where I hyperventilated at the kitchen table because Dad was screaming at me and while he HATED it when I would hyperventilate, it was a technique that would usually make him stop his rant and keep him from hurting me.

This is where I sat at the table and was writing something when Jodi came running in and pinched me. My "Whaaaa?" was immediately followed by Dad thundering in to smack me because Jodi told him that I'd pinched her.

This is where we'd wait with anticipation for Dad to pull one pound Hershey bars from our ears, and unpack the banana split's and apple turnovers from the bags from Short Stop. Where we'd grab the bottles of Tab or RC to be secreted away and drunk later, when we could pull them out, pop the top off, and make everyone jealous because we still had ONE BOTTLE left when all the pop was gone.

This is where we would pile up the eight packs of empties to be returned to Short Stop for the deposit so we could buy more pop, comic books and Sno-balls.

This is where I found Dad on the floor. Where the paramedics tended to him and he refused to go in the ambulance. He was too dizzy to stand up. Sitting on the floor in a t-shirt and his underwear. He finally road with Kevin to the hospital where they held him for two days before declaring he had a severe ear wax build up that was giving him vertigo. God, was he mad. They'd done all these TESTS and it was ear wax? Well, I said, how were they supposed to know without doing the tests? Exasperating.

This is where the intercom was...we'd call out to the garage to let Dad know he had a call, or tell him dinner was ready, or just bug him. We could hear him yell back, annoyed that we were interrupting again, or we'd hear his muffled voice and know that he was in the paint booth. Or we'd hear the grinder and know that he could never hear us over all that noise and we'd put on our shoes and run out to the garage.

The kitchen cupboards were familiar and full of both the mundane: Dinty Moore stew, as well as the unexpected: a bottle of gin that was mostly used to melt the ice when we were out of salt, but also could be served in Dixie cups to remind Lynn and I how disgusting drinking was. Okay, that only happened once, and the lesson was learned well. I think we were about seven and nine years old, and must have taken down the gin to sniff it or something. Maybe we even tasted it. I don't remember. What I do remember was sitting at the kitchen table with this Dixie cup of gin. The idea was that we were supposed to drink it. Teach us a lesson. I don't remember if we actually did though.

I have a photograph of Lynn, my grampa, and myself with a northern pike. I must have been about three years old. The fish was about the same height as I was. Grampa was wearing his overalls and his cap - a round cap with a brim that was flat on top. My grandparents were in this kitchen. My parents. Friends.

I made zucchini bread in this kitchen with Jenny Sutherland. We put in WAY too much baking soda and it was disgusting and inedible. I think we must have been about twelve.

Mostly when I walk into the kitchen what I remember is following Dad into the house. The way the house smells like Bondo. And mold. How he'd always offer me a Diet Coke (no, thanks.) I remember when we were talking about a friend of mine who used to foster kids, and he cared for a baby whose father had broken both of this little babies legs. Like little twigs he snapped them. Dad started to cry, and got up and went into the other room. He returned with a folder in which was the transcript of his time at the Children's Home Society. Of his own disturbing childhood.

There are pictures everywhere now on boards. Pictures from the memorial service. Pictures that break my heart all over again every time I walk into the house. I look at the pictures, and I know what the era was in which they were taken. Whether they were from those years when Dad was so mad all the time. I know that look. The one that said you were in trouble for breathing. Some were later, when he'd been left alone by everyone and started to think about whether just maybe it was his own doing. Maybe he needed to settle down. maybe it was time to just stop and be a better person. From that time when he was a better person.

When he was older, he would laugh more. Smile more. Hug us. Tell us he loved us. he'd practically beg you to stay just a little longer. And you would, but it was never long enough for him. And I rarely took him up on his offer to make dinner. I never quite got to that place where I was comfortable just being with him. I never quite let down my guard. There was always this strain of fear I guess. Something that warned me not to get too close or sit too long.

I always thought that there would be another day when I could try again. But we ran out of days before I ever found that place where I could relax with him and not feel tense. As long as we were moving around the yard, digging in the garage, standing outside...I was okay. but sitting down with him was hard. because conversation would always go to what I should be doing. What the kids should be doing. I always felt like it went to his comfort zone, which was making me feel like I wasn't good enough. The kids weren't doing well. If only I had a garage, or fixed up the house, or cleaned, or could stand up to the people at work, or WHATEVER. Sometimes I would end up crying after talking to him, and I'd call my mom, who would commiserate because she, too, knew that he didn't MEAN to make me feel that way. he just DID. What he wanted to accomplish was the opposite...to tell me how I could make things better. To improve my lot, or I don't know... But it always served to make me feel small and alone. And like a failure. Which was what I grew up feeling like, and what I strove to get away from. When my marriage ended, Dad was quick to tell me what a piece of shit Michael always was. Which didn't actually help. I knew that he meant it to make me feel better, but it made me feel like I'd made all these mistakes all the way back 15 years earlier. I knew that he didn't like Michael. That was no secret. But I felt judged. And when he would talk about what the kids should be doing, I felt judged and again, like I'd failed. Which is how I still feel.

So when I go to Dad's house, I look around and I feel like a failure all over again. Look around. It's a pit. What was I doing trying to live my life and letting him live like this? I know that it wasn't like I could come over and change his world, but why couldn't I just come over and help a little? And I can answer that, too. Because he would drive me nuts.

So I would go over and we would joke around, and we'd go to Home Depot, or I'd get 2x4s or tile. We'd talk about other things...Marv and what HE should be doing. Which was fine mostly because I knew that Marv does whatever he wants to do, too, and he's just fine. So nothing Dad said bothered me on that score.

But after a while I would start feeling like I had to get away. It was that sense of fear or flight or fight or something that would just appear and drive me away. I loved him, but was afraid to love him. I was afraid to be loved by him. There'd been too many years of fear and pain. I just couldn't seem to put it all behind me.

And now, I go to the house, and that fear and pain is still there, but he's gone, and it seems like everything that was good went with him, and now I'm just left with this gaping wound of what's left behind.

I can't look at a dowel - which I've found several of - without thinking of being beaten with them. Ditto for the belts. At what point does that go away? I've spent more of my life NOT being beaten than I did being beaten, and yet, here I am again. In that place. Mentally and physically. I'd finally put it all somewhere in my head where I could deal with it. And boom, it's all right back in my face. The good, the bad and the ugly. The dichotomy that was my dad. that was our relationship. All sorted out at one point now thrown back up in the air like 52 pick up.

And I know that it will never be over. That you can't really ever completely settle this complicated of a relationship. You can put it somewhere else for a while and then come back to it later. But it's not gone. It's just over there. And I could deal with it over there. THIS, I don't know how to deal with.

So I'm depressed again. I spent most of my life depressed. And I really thought I'd put all that behind me, too. I forgave him. I moved on. I still forgive him. But now I have to be in it all again. Steeped in his world. And I finally loved him...from afar mostly...but I did. And I was good with our relationship as it was. So now we have this new relationship. One where he gets to write me letters from the grave and I don't get to respond. One where I feel like I wish we'd had something different, but I can't imagine how we could have, and if he were alive, how it would be different now. And just thinking about it, I feel uncomfortable again just as I would when he was alive. But I want him to be alive again. I want that relationship back. I want to be able to go see him, and then leave and know that he would still be there when I came back.

I want to be able to hang up after talking to him, and go on with my life, knowing that we'll talk again in a month.

I just don't want him to be dead anymore. I'm not liking this. And I can't change it any more than I could change things when he was alive.