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.