Tomorrow...

It's your birthday tomorrow and I'm feeling, just, angry.

I feel like screaming. All I have left of you is a box full of fucking ashes and I want my father back! Why can't you be here to talk to? Why are you gone now, when I seem to be needing you the most?

I would like, just once, to be able to print one of these letters and mail it to you. I want you to be on your boat and getting your mail at the post office and buying pizza on the weekends and taking walks and calling me on sundays to tell me about your latest adventure and then make me laugh and say "well, I made you laugh, I can say goodnight now" and make me feel like I'm your daughter and I mean so much to you.

I can't have any of that now that you're gone.

Two years...

Two years ago today you walked away from your hospital bed and found peace and painless release. I try to picture you lifting the blankets from your lap; seeing something just beyond our seeing, your curious eyes full of sparkle as if you were a child. In my mind I see you blinking. "What is that light?" And you smile that mischievous smile that you would when something was so "neat" as you called it, that you'd stop mid-story to pick it up and marvel. And marvel you do, in my mind, a few steps from your bed and you wash away into light, quick, like the smoke escaping up a chimney. And you're free, in that split second, less time than it takes for you to realize where the light comes from there you are a part of it, and you are pure happiness, you become your own marvelous, mischievous smile.

You are missed by so many people. You are always remembered. We're here keeping things going for you Dad, keeping up years and knocking down the trees to make room for the next big thing. I'm marveling at "neat" and "building spaghettis" and turning out alright. I've got you to thank for so much. Even if I carry a solid pebble of anger at death itself I cherish your memory like a diamond. Isn't that what you said? "It's like everywhere I go people keep giving me big, big jewels. I'm the richest man."

I found something I know for sure you would have loved...it's almost as if the writer had you in mind.

 Live your life that the fear of death
can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about his religion.
Respect others in their views
and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life,
beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long
and of service to your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day
when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting
or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.
When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light,
for your life, for your strength.
Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason to give thanks,
the fault lies in yourself.
Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes wise ones turn to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision.
When your time comes to die, be not like those
whose hearts are filled with fear of death,
so that when their time comes they weep and pray
for a little more time to live their lives over again
in a different way.
Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

The Teaching of Tecumseh

I'm Okay...

For you, Dad.

........................................................

Look for me right when the lights go down
My own little natural high
I should be floating on top of the world
But I just keep wondering why

I feel more alone in this wonderful crowd
And I ever do on my own
I know that this is a place I belong
But I'd rather be coming back home

Oooh, I want you to know I'm okay
I just need to know that you're waiting
you're waiting
for me

Someone keeps saying I could be a star
Never quite sure what that means
Sounds like there's something I'm missing right now
I'm not who they think I could be

All that I'm missing is you my love
Come find me whenever you can
I'll be the one looking up at the sun
with a picture of you in my hand

Oooh, I want you to know I'm okay
I just need to know that you're waiting
you're waiting
for me

Oooh, I want you to know I'm okay
I just need to know that you're waiting
you're waiting
for me, oohho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nzcUg7qjVM

Found...

Thanks to old friends, some more photos of you.

I miss you every day. I'm trying to work through the pain of losing you. Some days are easier than others, some days I can't breathe. I keep getting hung up on the regret that I let you die alone. I should have been there.

Wild Scotland, Ashes and Dreams.

You're changing for me, Dad. I was reading back and realized that you're evolving. Your passed-on self is reality now and your living self is the past. Sometimes I feel as if I dreamt the living you. I'm hanging around the day you died. I can relive it anytime I want. It's my truth.
I spread some of your ashes, only the second time I've done it. This time I had the guts to touch them... well, I had no choice, really. The wind was whipping around me and I was on the  cliffs near an ocean in the wildest lands I've ever walked. It was near the 5000 year old ruins of Skara Brae. I had to move fast, so many people around. I unceremoniously/ceremoniously reached into the bag and palmed a handful of you, and faster than I could exhale...poof. You went.
You asked that they be spread in places I felt were beautiful. This time, your ashes covered me. My lips, my jacket, and my hair were coated in snowflakes of you. I looked into the grey sky and hoped you'd be happy there in such a wild place. Now that I look back on it, that place was so much of you. Wild, untamed, beautiful, mysterious and sacred.

My view and the sky where I set some of your ashes free.

The boat was in my dreams last night. Such a strange, confusing and painful dream. The boat was missing, lost, taken... and I was searching for it. I felt like failure. When I woke I was in a panic. I nearly ran downstairs to call Rocko. I'm so sorry this is going to so much crap, Dad. It isn't supposed to be like this! As I lay there I heard my own voice in my head talking you. I told you "I can't do this Dad, I need help. Please help me."
I slept again, and this time the dream was my mother and I searching for the boat. A call from behind me, my mom, she says she's found it. When I reach her she's looking up and smiling, saying "there she is!" I look up and the boat is resting, nested, 1/3 inside and on top of the roof of a house. I call out to the boat: "Hello old lady! There you are! How did you get up there huh?" and I am relieved and happy to see her. I see she's slightly damaged on her hull and the bare spines are showing but I know this can be fixed. Never mind how she got up there, I'm just glad she's safe. The boat is you, Dad. I think in ways she's your living self.

"Find Your Boat"

Cancer was the only storm the clouds didn't warn us about.....




Getting ready to move, I was sorting your things today. So many folders of papers with notes, appointments, invoices, pencil-written contracts on cigarette packs. I found a letter, folded in four, and the words "my sarah" double underlined. It was one of my letters mixed in with your morphine slips and unfilled prescriptions...and I just know you intended me to find it. It was the last letter I'd written you, the one where I told you about my depression; the end of my relationship with Julie, falling out of love, and how lost I was. You'd written notes within the lines, in response to mine. I nearly crumbled when I read your reply to my admittance that I'd fallen out of love with Julie: "You got guts, girl."
And then, at the end, in bold letters you told me "find your boat."

Find my boat, Dad. I hear you. Find what sustains me. Find peace that exists without anyone else. Find happiness and worth in my own creation. Find a home. Create my destiny and take pride in what I know is mine, is right, has meaning.

Thank you, Dad. Those 3 words may actually keep me alive, relentless in a storm. Never, ever give up on a dream. Thank you.


(But, god, oh god, how I do miss you still. I haven't stopped falling 'up'.)

Strange...

I don't actually know why I'm writing... I feel the need to talk to you. I want you to know how hard I'm trying to make it in the world, knowing you've gone on to another place. I feel you around me. It's getting easier to accept that you're gone, now, the days don't feel so raw anymore. I can look at your urn and I just feel familiar, I've developed a familiarity with your 'passed on' self. I guess that's it... when you died you became a stranger, this new form I'd never known you to have. You'd always been a constant in my life, to call on, to talk to, to know I could ask for help if I needed it, and, even run to.
You're still a constant, constant like the stars, constant like the moon. Even in daylight you're there above me, watching over me, and I know if I look up I can see your face. The world still turns beneath you and I am in it. I'm missing your voice right now, Dad. I need to see if I can find that DVD of you. I think I could be ready to hear you and see you again. I'm ready for that layer of pain. I love you my Daddy.