Even More

Another Thanksgiving come amd gone. How I missed you that day. My first blog ever
( http://otherdissed.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-day.html ) was our baked potato Thanksgiving, and somehow that one day of you and me and simple but tasty food set a standard for the event.

Giving thanks.
Being grateful.
Being fully aware.

Oh, god, how I miss you on days like that.

Oddly enough, I kept thinking I smelled you. There was nothing here that I could track that held your scent. The things that were you are packed in boxes in my bedroom closet, and yet I could smell you and feel you as I sat here at my computer. It was like the days when i would compute and you would sit in your recliner behind me.
I don't have your recliner, but I have sensed you 'claiming' the one I got in its place. And, yes, it sits right there behind me when I am at the computer. If I turn quickly enough, will I see you there? (That would be weird.)

Writing this, I am again getting whiffs of the scent that is you.
And defies logic that it should exist in this place, where you never were.

It reminds me to be thankful that you are free and no longer frail.
Not bound by illness and anger and regrets.
Thankful that love remains, and can still, somehow, be shared. 

The Mountains in Your Life.

I get it now, better than I did back then. Now that I have been to the mountains on a visit to the mountains, I get it.
Why you always talked of going back.Why, even in the winding-down days of your life (but before your final illness) you even thought of moving there.

I'm glad I told you I would go.

What I don't understand is why you didn't and wouldn't go there more often than you did. I wish you had gone more often. There was rarely any big reason not to. Little reasons,m yes, but those could have been overcome.

That part, your not-going, I don't get at all. Probably just something in your make-up -- that is just the way you were.

I do wish I had pushed you a little harder about going. Now that I have gone deeper into the mountains, I feel that I somehow let you not have peace, serenity, and beauty in your last months and years.

I hope youy are enjoying those things now.

The Waiting Month.

Made it through August, the month of birthdays.The month of your birthday.
You would have turned 62 this year. Early retirement age.
Would Social Security have been checking over your file, and going over your benefits? They have a (good) reputation for doing things like that. Checking out all the ways you might qualify. and deciding which one gives you the most money.
That would probably still be disability, given that there haven't been raises in benefits for a while. And on the summaries they send in the mail, disability usually pays more than retirement -- especially early retirement. At some point they probably even out, and maybe retirement even comes out ahead, but, in your case, we will never know.
Right now, I get more as your survivor than I would draw on my own, even, at this point, at full retirement age. I can see you smiling at that, thinking something finally works the way its supposed to.

It's been a different August this year.
Hailey's last year in single digits.
Max's first birthday with you since you left us.
Cool and dry, especially for August.
Long and lonely days and nights without you while I'm not working.

And now it is September.
Warren is going to school, starting tomorrow. How did he get so big already?
Hailey's last year in elementary school. She's unhappy that she won't be there next year to show him the ropes when he goes into kindergarten, our big-hearted loving little girl (and Warren's big- hearted big sis.)
And I am off work with bad legs and bad eyes and no one sane to talk to for all the long hours.
The West is afire, the South is awash, and climate change is inevitable, because change is inevitable. This years natural disasters seem to be doing quite a bit of terra-forming.
I find that interesting.

I called it a waiting month, because soon it will be October again. And October seems to have an affinity for tragedy in many small ways.
Yes, I see pending personal losses, but hope and pray to be wrong.
Miracles happen.
They do.
They can.

And so I wait.

But not for you, because it is sinking in so much more that you just are not when it comes to living out my life, and even these few years later, that is immense.
Immensely empty.

In the immense emptiness of the desert, cactus blooms after a shower.
In the immense emptiness of space, stars are born and die.
In the immense emptiness of me, there is always you.

Love, always,
Always.

Big Hole

There's still such a big hole in me where you aren't.

I miss your presence, your look, your laugh.
I miss someone to (not) talk to, but there anyway.
I miss company.
I miss laughing together.
I miss plans.

I see you every day. In Tammy's work, and Warren's walk, and Hailey's big brown eyes. In every corner of my house, where you never were, but are somehow still there. (Such an add, otherly feeling) I hear you sometimes as I lay drowsing, or as I begin to rouse. (Rousing and drowsing -- where I find Rex.)

Warren makes me laugh, but its a different kind of laughter.

I try not to bother you where you are. You should be free from earthbound problems. You deserve enjoyment and freedom and all that stuff.
Sometimes I just need to talk.

Sometimes I just need to rest my eyes on you, but you are only a picture and a memory. (Well, pictures and memories.)

I don't know how to go on like this.
Not that I have much choice, since the days come and the nights go as they always have.

I miss you.

Warren

Let me tell you about our boy, Rex. I haven't for a while, and I want to. Good enough reasons? Good.

He has your eyes. Not the color, his are more grey than brown, bordering on blue. But the shape of them, the clarity, the way the soul looks out through them -- all very Rex.
He walks like you, he sits and thinks like you (the cogitation, not the actual thoughts. At least I hope not.)

It may be that he talks like you. I don't know how you developed verbally.
He is verbally closer to a two year old than a four year old, which he is closing in on fast.  His words are just now becoming clear, more often thsn not. One can have a conversation with him now. A limited conversation, but a conversation.
He still speaks a great deal of baby babble -- his own private language. But he Englishes more and more frequently.

And he has understood a lot more than he verbalizes for a very long time.

He's in the tantrum stage, which is fairly normal and fairly close to age appropriate. He's very very good at those, the little cutie stinker stubborn hardhead. He likes to bang his head and smack himself, which is somewhat alarming, but not unheard of.

He is so smart, when it comes to doing things. He stacks anything. You would laugh s hard, sometimes. When he comes to see me, he strips the bookshelf under the television. Not to make a mess, not because he can.
Where I see books and quiet escapes and all, he sees blocks.
Blocks to build with.
Blocks to stack.
Walls.
Ladders/steps.
Bridges.
Towers.

What a boy!

Thank You

Been talking with you, telling you how Tammy needs your help with her car. If there's anything you can do to help, please help her. she really needs it/you. Don't know what you could do or how you could do it, but if you can please do something to help her.

Then help comes, and it has to be from you. Because who it is.

Don't know yet if it will be bad news, good news, or a mixture, but help is coming and it's coming from your direction.

Thank you.

Another Year Without You

And we need you more than ever. Tammy needs you, Tracy needs you, I need you, and I'm sure your brothers and sisters think of you from time to time, and then this whole awful terrible Rexless reality slaps them in the face that they need not wonder what or how you are doing because you just aren't. I know Bo thinks of you often, because he is helping me in many ways.

So hard, this time of year. Last year was Niagara Falls.
This year was work, and 80 degree weather in friggin' mid-October.

I just hate yuou being gone...