I still haven't written it down and I don't intend to now. Some days, the awfulness of how he passed engulfs me and there isn't anything else that matters. When that happens, I can't even imagine how people keep on going when someone they love dies. I honestly don't know how I will keep on going when that time comes--I'm certain it will break me.

There are some days when it is so hard to go into work. I have no energy and no heart and my job is so monotonous and not in any way fulfilling. But on other days, I forget it happened, or I almost do anyway and life's what it always was. When I remember, I feel so guilty, until my mind freezes over and I feel nothing. Or I start laughing. I still can't believe that it happened. How a person can just be erased.

Since I got back, I've been walking a lot, both at work and home. With music. It helps to be outside. I've become so house-bound since I moved up here to Washington, ironically (it's so freaking beautiful up here!!), first with that awful depression over Kyle and my loss of faith in the religion I grew up in (though I never did admit my depression included that loss to myself until recently), then with Dad's diagnosis and living with him for six months (still in the midst of that great depression), then with the onset of full-time school and full-time work in early 2013, I just stopped enjoying the outdoors. I had forgotten how much I love being outside. It sounds strange, I know, but every time I get out there, echoes of what I used to feel and be when I was kid/early teen come back and a quiet joy is on the verge of filling me with something good and whole. It's good, it's healing, and I will not let this outlet go ever again.

The dreams with dad have stopped, but I'm still having stressful work dreams with impossible accounts and sheer PANIC; haven't been sleeping well since I got back...shocker, right? And apparently I'm not the only one...muahahhahahahaa. Yep, I did just write that down. Man, I'm such easy pickings; I'm mortified by my transparency.

But that part of me on fire doesn't give a damn.

I jump.

I jump from overwhelming sorrow to a ticklish feeling that it was all just a bad dream and my life is no different. I laugh over his ludicrous life decisions, his oddities, his creepiness, his old cruelty. Then, sometimes, I rage over all the past abuse and lost opportunities. Then I go back to normal again...feeling nothing at all?

Then there are sudden moments of sheer panic, like I'm at right now, shivering in the harsh, cold light of reality that my father was buried today. Physically placed in the ground. Because he hasn't been alive in 11 days, hasn't breathed, or thought, or dreamed, or spoken, or existed in 11 days. That I will never see him again, will never talk to him again, never call him on our shared birthday ever again.

He doesn't exist anymore.

I wish I could have been there for the burial in Utah. The funeral service we had in Texas didn't feel real, didn't touch me at all, except for Kjerstie's eulogy. She did an amazing job. It felt more like a reunion with family and other people I hadn't seen in ten years or more. With his body laid out in the casket casually in the background, cold clay, stiff and unyielding. God, I didn't want to see his body again after it was wrapped up in blankets and wheeled out of his home on a stretcher. I will never, ever forget that moment as long as I live. But the grandparents wanted a viewing. It was awful.

Thanks to Char for taking the above picture and for being there when the rest of us couldn't.

I'm back home again. Dad died on March 7th. Funeral was on Tuesday this week and he is being buried in Utah this upcoming Tuesday. I can't be there for it, so I'm planning on visiting Char sometime this year and go out with her to see his grave.

I can't write about all of it now--it's only one of the hardest things I've ever gone through and I'm going to be processing it for a long, long time. Ripped open a lot of old wounds and made fresh ones too.

I'm going to bed now, I think. I'm already mentally/emotionally exhausted from writing that. Not that it will do a lot of good. Been having a really, really difficult time sleeping since I went down there.

Will be back to work on Monday and this school quarter finishes up next Friday---in other words, I'm doomed.

P.S. Made a playlist of some of Dad's favorites. Will be playing a lot of Moody Blues and Top Gun the next couple of weeks.