2009.02.10 A Year Without Dad - Revision history

RooK at 04:22, 13 March 2018

2018-03-13T04:22:04Z

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	Dad died one year ago today, a day before I could get home to Canada to be with him one last time. I'd say that I've made it mid-way through the phase of grief where I manage life day-to-day just fine, but still feel guilty about not grieving more. It's a stupid phase, and one I look forward to being done with; I'm not any good at doing guilt.		Dad died one year ago today, a day before I could get home to Canada to be with him one last time. I'd say that I've made it mid-way through the phase of grief where I manage life day-to-day just fine, but still feel guilty about not grieving more. It's a stupid phase, and one I look forward to being done with; I'm not any good at doing guilt.

RooK at 04:21, 13 March 2018

2018-03-13T04:21:52Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 04:21, 13 March 2018
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	[[category:2009 Rant]]		[[category:2009 Rant]]
	Dad died one year ago today, a day before I could get home to Canada to be with him one last time. I'd say that I've made it mid-way through the phase of grief where I manage life day-to-day just fine, but still feel guilty about not grieving more. It's a stupid phase, and one I look forward to being done with; I'm not any good at doing guilt.		Dad died one year ago today, a day before I could get home to Canada to be with him one last time. I'd say that I've made it mid-way through the phase of grief where I manage life day-to-day just fine, but still feel guilty about not grieving more. It's a stupid phase, and one I look forward to being done with; I'm not any good at doing guilt.

RooK: 1 revision imported

2018-03-13T04:17:59Z

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RooK at 21:26, 26 February 2011

2011-02-26T21:26:04Z

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[[category:2009 Rant]]
Dad died one year ago today, a day before I could get home to Canada to be with him one last time. I'd say that I've made it mid-way through the phase of grief where I manage life day-to-day just fine, but still feel guilty about not grieving more. It's a stupid phase, and one I look forward to being done with; I'm not any good at doing guilt.

I do still miss him terribly, though. In the same manner, I suppose, as the fact that the sun insists on rising every day.

There are holes in my reality.<br>
Gaps in my existence, since he died.<br>
Quite apart from merely missing him.<br>
I keep tripping over them, stumbling from them, regretting them.

Despite my lameness, I have been formulating a plan. Well, as much as anyone can plan a philosophy or plot an intent. It goes something like this:

The holes, the gaps, they come from an effect generally described as "lack of dad". Right? OK. Well, come July, there should be a freshly-minted new dad - me. Obvious, I know. But, in all seriousness, what better way to keep my father as part of my life than draw from my memory of him every day to help me be a father to my own son? Whatever sense of inadequacy I might feel about stepping in his shoes, to fill the dad-gap, will just have to be dealt with - because I simply must do whatever it takes to be adequate for Sport Junior. Right? Right. Reality will require what is needed, and I'll conform, and so that will be the size of things. And it will be regardless of my own insecurities, my hero worship, or my pathetic imagination.

So maybe it's not so much a plan as a restating of the obvious, but it does comfort me somewhat to phrase it thus.

In the same manner, so too am I contemplating a re-imagining of the book I'm planning about my dad. Instead of a set of droll tongue-in-cheek retellings of our adventures, meant mostly to elicit laughter from malicious old jerks, perhaps they could be told as children's book fairy tales - to pass on to Sport Junior an understanding of dad's spirit. Instead of just mocking ourselves and laughing at our folly, however lovingly it might have been meant, I could try to recapture my own wide-eyed wonder at being my father's son.

With the defiant joy that is my heritage, life is going on and going well. Nevertheless, there remains a hard kernel of indigestible sadness - wishing that dad could have known his grandson as well as I mean for the grandson to know about him.