#dad's gone

[calvin-af-crone]

Burns is at the Omnia tonight. Left behind with Calvin’s house all to himself. Tomorrow he should shoot lots of snaps & show off decor we haven’t seen before.

[poseysprostate]

i literally just found out that David Karp, Tumblr Daddy, left us???

[lettersonlosingdad]

The first letter

Dear void,

My dad passed away unexpectedly last month. It's been 6 weeks and 3 days without him. I don't think I'm handling grief correctly. Everyone says there's no wrong way to mourn someone, but I think they might be wrong because there cannot be anything right about the way I am turning to stone. A twenty-three year old block of cold hard granite. My sensitive side is being overpowered by this desire to just not feel anything and I am succeeding. I am living my life normally, with extremely brief periods of crushing panic attacks at two in the morning when I'm clutching my pillow and wondering if I'll every take a full breath again. I am living in the shallow breaths, in the shallow side of the pool, the shallow side of life, clinging to the steps in the pool of grief, straining to hold myself up and away from the waves that occasionally catch my toes.

I have been in this pool before. It was smaller then and not as sudden, when I lost my grandmother. I succeeded in throwing everything I had into work. I let my brain and heart section themselves off into the tiny pieces needed for day to day life and threw up brick walls around them. I am succeeding again. I have built strong walls around the most broken parts of my brain and heart. I think Dad was good at this as well- he built strong walls and forgot the bad done to him and the bad he did and was able to move forward. Maybe he also didn't let grief catch him. Maybe he blocked everything out when he lost his dad as a child. Maybe. I never asked.

I realized this morning, as I was brushing my teeth that I can't remember the exact last time I cried for my dad. Was it last Friday morning? Last Thursday night? Or days earlier? For some reason, this realization didn't immediately bother me.

I keep forgetting that he's gone. I remember in the elevator at work- a sudden passing thought, remembered in the same manner as the e-mail I forgot to send or the dry-cleaning I've yet to drop off. "Oh yes, my dad is gone." Other times I remember after thinking of something to tell him. I always called my dad while I was pumping gas, always. That's it- that's the last time I cried- a week ago while filling up my car.

Then, this morning while walking out the door my keys slid off the dresser. I reached down to grab them and saw a book on the floor- "Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series" by Tyler Knott Gregson. And I flashed to one of the last poems dad send me- the first poem I ever read by Tyler.

"Promise me you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep you head above the ways that you forget, truly forget, how much you have always loved to swim." ~Tyler Knott Gregson ~

This blog is me swimming. It's me diving into the deep end of the pool and letting grief cover my head until I can't breath and maybe even until I pass out and float listlessly to the top, in hopes that I'll come out with a full stronger heart.

[neonmanatee]

So I guess my parents just announced their divorce. I shouldn't be upset because they've hated each other for years, but I'm still very upset for some reason. I feel like my entire life as I've known it is ending.

If any of my followers have divorced parents, could you help me out? I really don't know what to do right now.

[percivalwulfricbryan]

I'm gonna have a tall guinness and a shot of jack to remember you by when i'm gone.

my dad, leaving for the airport