I'm Not Feeling Like Myself Lately

When someone dies or another tragedy happens, you tend to start doing things you wouldn't normally. You become more honest w/ yourself and others. Either because it matters so much or because nothing matters at all anymore.

You start telling your dad's girlfriend how much he loved her, when before you didn't really ever want to see her, much less speak to her. You asked him not to bring her to your wedding. Now, you look at her with eyes of love, like he must have. You love her for making him happy.

You start telling your mother to stop talking gibberish, you get mad at her for telling people her "husband" died. They had been divorced for 10 years. And living together ever since. He in the basement, she in the master bedroom.

You start telling people things "Like it is." Like it matters. If they ask you how you feel you say, "Well, crappy. Pretty horrible, but what are you going to do." They either understand, or shuffle off confused. My cousin Annie wrote a moving post shortly after my dad died. Along with her blog and the comments (Thank You) my experiences of the conversations that ensued were echoed: the people you talk to are quickly sorted into "People Who Knew Death" and "People Who Didn't", as described by one commenter.

You also start caring about exercise for the first time since the long days spent seated next to a hospital bed. Not just because you want to become skinnier, but because you are actually concerned with your health, so you don't get cancer too. Although you begin to fear just about anything can cause it, pre-disposition or not. Your dad went in under 4 months from time of diagnosis. Boom.

And then you are suddenly thinking about where to store ashes (jewelry is kind of nice, or a paperweight?), how to close down a dead man's checking account, or who is going to wear all his jeans and t-shirts, imagining yourself wearing them to bed, and you wonder if you should take up wood-working since he left behind so many tools and you start to have these crazy crazy thoughts that seem so normal considering who you've been forced to become.

You start to work through your lunches and not really care all that much about eating like you used to. You realize that your craving for chips as a distraction is really just that, you can wait. You waited all day to eat when your dad was dying.

Things become frighteningly clear. You learn the real definitions of things. My mom told me of when she lost her father that a friend asked her what it was like to lose her dad. She replied, "I've learned the true meaning of the word never."

Even though you get some insight you may not change your actions or have the power to change all that much. It's not necessarily about that. I know people do crazy things after an epiphany, quit their jobs, have affairs, spend all their money, eat cookies all day. They are running away. My best friend said after I told her I wanted to try to run away from my problems, "You aren't just going to be running away, you are going to be running towards something."

The last word: Keep runnin'.