July 19, 2020

Today is weird. Maybe it’s because I think I gave myself a slight concussion when I fell off my skateboard the other night, but there’s something else. I go outside and my skin feels different. And then I notice that the color of the roses is their regular watercolor color with extra water. Their color is thinning (fading is definitely not the right word; it is thinning.) I remember snipping roses that color and bringing them into the room where my father lay dying.

He was doing a lot more than dying. He was actually living for the last time. I don’t know how else to say that that seems right.

My dad would have hated being sick in some long, drawn out way. He was more physically active than I am now. He stayed away from foods high in cholesterol and he was mentally sharp as a goddamn sword. He fell and broke his hip and it was revealed that he had stage 4 cancer and he was gone in a month. And I don’t believe he would have wanted it any other way.

That’s not entirely true. He would have wanted more time. He would have liked to ride his mountain bike on more trails and take his dog for more walks and go to his grandchildren’s graduations, to their weddings if they decide to get married. What he would not have wanted was to lay in bed sick.

“I’m ready to go,” he told me three weeks after his diagnosis. Crows began hanging around the trees outside our house. I went outside and picked more watercolor flowers and put them in tiny jars because there weren’t a lot and their stems were so thin. I feel it. I haven’t been able to really feel my dad’s death and I thought it would come sooner than later and then when I felt it on Father’s Day I was relieved because I was worried I was numb.

But here it is again on my skin in the garden. Hot summer days and nights outside watering, trying to keep things alive. The things I can control. I remember feeling spirits in the house, how they frightened me even though I knew they shouldn’t. I remember being disappointed when the crows disappeared, because I knew he was ready to go.

I feel like I am reliving something in a parallel universe. And it doesn’t feel too big and it doesn’t feel too small it feels and I am just so grateful to feel him again