Summer offensive by Danired on Flickr.
today: woke early. coming up: PetCo for a fish (!!!), Health Center appointment (FINALLY), buy tea, visit the post office.
hmm
Just now, I was having a teary moment and asking the sky to give Daddy back, and looking out my big window. And oddly enough, the window across the parking lot, which belongs to, I am fairly sure, an unoccupied house/apartment, flashed a string of orangey/yellow lights three times. Hi, Daddy?
There’s just so many things like this I keep hearing about. Barbara from the library, who apparently sleeps like a log, woke feeling terrible at the exact time we think Daddy’s mind shut down. She woke her husband, Tom, and he asked what was wrong. She said to him, “Something’s terribly wrong - Randal is gone.” And when my mom called Michael and Angela to tell them that Daddy had died a few hours previous, as they were on the phone, a red-tailed hawk flew over and landed on their porch just outside the window, looked at them, and then flew away. They think it was Daddy’s spirit, saying goodbye. And Leah’s things with the birds of prey in the time when Daddy was dying.
And other peoples’ stories. Susan’s thing with the owl at her late friend Sue’s house. Julie’s story of the book flying off the shelf while they planned her dad’s funeral (“no! don’t spend money on me! spend money on BOOKS!” they imagine Buchie was saying). Julie’s story of honest-to-God seeing her (dead) father in a chair across from her when she was at a guy’s house. Her father told her, “Julie, leave now. Get yourself out of here.” She didn’t listen…and it turned out that the guy was seriously Bad News and had definite intention to harm her. (She got away okay.) The tree that fell in the backyard just after Opa died. The odd weather the week after Daddy died. How the program for Matt’s first play after Dad’s death was printed upside-down - like Dad’s favorite card.
There’s just…there’s a lot there. Both Susan and Julie are scientists (Susan’s phD in bio, Julie’s in psychiatry). When Julie was talking about this, and Susan was there, she said “I feel stupid saying this in front of another scientist,” and Susan quickly said, “oh, I’m a believer.”
I think there is something there.
Remember by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
(My choir did this last year. The whole week of the shiva it echoed in my head.)
Sonnet LXXIII (even though I’m not up to it yet)
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long:
(This was Daddy’s favorite sonnet. I read it to him in the hospital, and he gave a slight smile. In his copy, the last line ends with a colon, not a period, which I think is interesting and probably a typo but also gives it this sense of oh - I wasn’t done!)
(via fuckyeahhermione)
“it’s already broken, it’s already clear, I walk on the ocean, disappear
yeah & I, I don’t mind if you treat me unkind”
( - Already Broken, Gandalf Murphy & The Slambovian Circus of Dreams)
another dream…
I dreamed that Daddy came to my room at home and he was feeling very cold so he lay down on the floor and I put a blue blanket over him while I am inflating the air mattress to make a bed for him. He says something to me about his “seatbelt,” and I told him, “No, Daddy, we’re in my room, not in the car.” And I begin to call for my mother, first regularly but increasingly panicked and desperate, because I know my father is dying. She won’t come, so I go out to get her and go downstairs. At this point it becomes apparent that my dad isn’t in my room and we’ve actually been text messaging. I show her my phone and say “MOMMY this was his last text and nothing since then - should I text?” and she says no, wait - we don’t want to interrupt a peaceful death, if that is what is happening. I stomp my foot and yell, “I want him back!” and she says “I know,” and hugs me. There’s a van outside from the United Church of Christ (?) and they keep honking, and she says maybe we’ll go there on Sunday. We won’t open the door but they keep honking and backing up a few feet, then moving forward a few feet, back and forth.
…then I woke up and called Peter. And wrote the dream down in a notebook. I think writing them down is a good idea.
last night
I dreamed that I dreamed he was alive. We had driven high into the mountains to take photos on top of them, and each time I came to a mountain peak I was searching for chairs, explaining to people, “we need an especially good chair for my father, he can’t walk very well.” Then we all - Mom, Daddy, Matt, and I - were at this little eating-place, like an A&W. I was so upset that my dad was dead/going to die that I slid under the table and hid. I told someone to call Warren. (Warren is this amazing man who works at the campus ministry and helps out with Women’s Center things and I generally adore him.) Warren came and told us to all write what was going on and hand them to him - in the condensation on a cup, I traced letters to write what was wrong and handed it to him, and he said something like “this is very impermanent.” I felt guilty that my parents were seeing me so upset - I didn’t want them to worry.
Then, inside the dream, I woke up and remembered that my dad had already died. I’m glad that I was spared remembering that for the first time when I woke.
I need to call my grandmother back. She called me and left a wandering voicemail about how she needs to call someone on the weekends…she doesn’t know why (she used to call my dad every weekend). So I will call her back.
I can’t
do anything I am supposed to do.
There are dirty dishes alongside the sink. I only read one of five chapters I need to’ve read by 10 am tomorrow. I don’t know if my teacher wanted the response to this one chapter by tomorrow or what so it isn’t completed.
Instead I’ve been reading Good Grief (stupidly, I already read this book like ten times, why can’t I stop now?) and listening to music and not-cleaning. Also I washed my face.
Why can’t I do any of the things I’m supposed to?
13 Plays
Grey Sky Eyes : Carbon Leaf
your veil is so thin
(for Laura)
Leeyuh made it work!
So yes. As I was saying. My theme song. I remember Ruth saying this song reminded her of me (and others agreeing).
where is the girl behind the cloud? grey sky always floating by, but I only peek when I’m allowed.
you welcome me in, and your veil is so thin, but the mystery continues to grow. you say you must realize that my grey sky eyes neither rain nor they glow, now you know.
