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Monday, January 03, 2005

New Year, Sad Girl

I haven't posted in almost a month, but it's not for lack of trying. Everytime I have tried to get something new out there, I just couldn't. So instead I'll just give a small account of why I haven't been able to bring myself to write anything intelligent.

My dad died. Happy Holidays.

The last post I did about my memories of car trips is unbearable for me to think about now, but it does give a small insight into the amazing person that Dad was. "Was." I feel so angry that I should have to refer to my dad in the past tense. It's not fair, it's not right, it's not acceptable to me. At all. I honestly have no idea how to even begin to describe what a complete and utter devastation and shock this has been. I have always felt so sad and sorry for people I've known who've lost a parent at a young age. Now Bimpsy and I are those people.

Sad, lost little girls in adult bodies, trying to comprehend life with out Poopsie. Trying to help Sonjah comprehend life without a husband who absolutely adored her and devoted his life to her, a thousand times more so when her Multiple Sclerosis went from bad to horrific. Crying for my children who will never get to know their grandfather, Matthew Balcom Dunn, except through stories and pictures and memories stored in their mother's heart and mind. Hundreds of memories, but not thousands. Not millions. Not nearly enough to pack into 29 short years before I was robbed.

For this past Father's Day, I gave Dad a small canister with 100 scrolls of paper inside, individually tied with ribbon, each a reason why he is the best Dad in the world. I would always get after him because he wasn't reading them. He said he wanted to save them for as long as he could, so he'd only read one every few days or so. He saved the open ones in a drawer in his bedside table.

He read 48 of them. Not even half.

There are 52 reasons out there that he never even knew. Fifty-two other memories lost in a void of so many others that I never will be able to roll up and tie with ribbon and give to him. He never finished the Top 100 Hits of My Life with My Dad. Only a measly 48.

Those 48 reasons now reside on my dresser, next to the 52 unopened ones. There's no one to open them now. No Dad to even get a small inkling of how much he meant to me, and how much he influenced my life, every year, month, and day.

Did you know, Dad?

Did you know????

I love you. I miss you. My heart is broken.


4 comments:

Christie said...

I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm so sorry.

Anonymous said...

Trying to articulate how I feel about dad's death has proved a difficult task. I can only say that it changes every day. Someday I'll analyze this emotion more fully and perhaps give it a name. It's not loss, it's not anger, it's not anxiety, it's not lonliness. It hovers somewhere between all of those. Oddly the best description of how it feels when a parent dies is from a children's book. It's like "walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down through the air and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try to readjust the way you thought of things."That's it. That's it right there. --Bimpsie

goblinbox said...

I'm so sorry for your loss of what sounds like the greatest Dad in the whole wide world. I hope the strength of your memories of such a wonderful father sustain you and your family.

Boonzie said...

Thanks, everyone.Sam - REALLY not foolin' anyone with the whole "anonymous" thing. :) As much as you comment, and thank goodness you do, just sign the heck in!