Grief is such a weird thing. I can't bring myself to move on after being with my dad and my two sisters at the time of his passing. I'm back home now, but holy shit, this last month has gone so fucking fast. 3 weeks ago he called me out of the blue. Not ordinary by itself for him, but I knew what it was before he even told me. He's Alwyas been the type to not bother anyone, nor want to be bothered. He was take it or leave it. He was happiest with a dog, an old pickup, and some outlaw country music on some old dirt road, by himself out in the hills. Or tinkering away in his little trailer where he lived for 19 years. 19 years in such a small space. It was so run down it was almost sad by the time we got to it. it WAS sad. Sad that we let him get to that point. Sad that he also lived that way. He was never dirty. Never gross, or lazy or in any kind of way unclean, but you could tell just by going through all his stuff that it just got away from him. "I'm gonna die." He told me; almost nonchalant about it. He's smoked since he was a teenager, and having already lost my mom to the same kinda thing what feels like so long ago, I had always prepared myself for that call. THE call. The one that you know is going to hit you like that thirst you get in the middle of the night after a terrible hangover and you just need SOMETHING. So that Tuesday night when he called me out of the blue, after hearing about these hiccups that wouldn't go away and he couldn't get comfortable, I knew what it was. And before he even called, I know that I knew that I wasn't ready to hear it. I tried to play it off. I tried to make light of it, like he was going to be okay, because if I treated it that way, I knew it would give him hope. I didn't want him to see me break. Not that soon. Not right away. In my adult life, we were never really close in terms of distance. I kinda always just did my thing and moved away from both sides of the family. The thing is though, I never once doubted if he loved me. I'd always just think "Man, I need to call him back." Then a week went by. Two. Turned into a month, but I'd always eventually call him back. "Sure wish I could see my kids" he'd say. Or "Hope I get to see Joe again before I die." And I always told myself I'd make it out there. Get some real father-son time in with him for at least a week or so. It never came. He knew all he had to do was express some sort of interest in wanting to see me (or any of us really) and we would be there. It just goes back to him not wanting to bother or be bothered. That's just who he was. Take it or leave it and he didn't care either way and chances are you were going to hear about it. So when we got there the night of Veteran's day to the VA hospital in Phoenix and it was late, and my sister came wheeling him out and the first thing he said was "Well that looks like Joe, but I can't tell behind that big ol' beard!" It broke me. The last time I had seen him was a decade ago when we were passing through on our move to Texas, and now I'm in Georgia and it's just me and the dog and my best friend and his parents and my job. And that's it. I immediately went back to being a little kid and every time I'd see him when he came to pick me up or when it came time at the end of the summer to say goodbye to him I couldn't bear it. I treated it like it was going to be the last time I saw him.
So that first night, we wheeled him out to the bench outside the VA with his phone and a pack of Marb reds and we just sat there while he chain smoked, because at that point what was it going to do, kill him? And this was one of the songs that came up. "God this is such a sad fuckin' song" he said; and it is. But he just sat there tapping his feet, singing along, and in that moment, nothing else mattered. It didn't matter to me that this was going to be the last time I saw my daddy or that I knew what the end result was going to look like because I watched my mom go through the same thing already. God damn it it was so fucking hard knowing that he was just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse and eventually just fade away. Fuck it was so hard.
Everything was just so fast. It turned into "well maybe i'll make it through this thing and I'll tell you what if I do I'm going to make some changes in my life." Then the plan was just to have us all there. And he just fought the entire way because he was in so much pain. Couldn't lie down, couldn't get comfortable. Standing, sitting, confused, didn't know where he was, he was combative, angry, hurtful, even. He hadn't slept in days. Nobody could blame him, but it was so hard. He was my hero. Nobody messed with him. He didn't take any shit and probably ran his mouth more than he should've, but he didn't care. Never towards me, I was his best friend. He would save up all year long just to come pick me up in Montana and take me back to Utah for the summer and then make the same drive back. I wish I could go back to those times just sitting in his trailer early in the morning with him sitting on that old brown couch every morning playing songs on his guitar and singing to me and I'd talk to him and laugh at him and ask him questions and he'd just keep singing and staring at me almost like nothing else mattered but just the two of us right then and there. I have so many simple memories of him just doing little things like that. Or riding around in his old S10 just going for a drive with a coke from the stagestop and we would just drive around listening to the radio and he'd put his big hand on my knee and just laugh and shake me and just sing along to all those old cowboy songs. It makes me sad I've lost my best friend. My hero. The answer to all my problems. I'd call him after a particularly bad fight between me and (insert ex GF here) whomever, or a shit day at work, or a good day, or any reason at all, or no reason at all, and he always had the answer. Always knew exactly what to say to ease my pain. It's like he had already been through exactly what I was going through at the time and could see 3 steps ahead of me and knew how it was going to turn out because we were so similar in that way. Maybe I'll share some more later when this shit continues to get too heavy and I need some sort of outlet.
Anyway, Hope y'all had a great holiday and I promise i'm not always this dark and sad, this is just a weird spot in my life.
TLDR: Dad died and i'm grieving.
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