happy birthday, dad

i'm awake. i can't sleep. i'm restless, a little nauseas, angry and sad. today is going to be a tough day, made tougher by knowing that i must rely on myself for comfort. i do have my family, which helps, but it's not the same. i feel very abandoned. so, hello blog. maybe this can be my ears to listen to me when i need to say something.

my aunt and grandmother won't be here until 6-7pm, and we can't eat til then. /die. the celebrating will have to wait until the end of the day?? maybe i'll get a vietnamese sandwich today. i haven't gotten one yet since i've been here. everyday has been a combination of responsibilities and stretches of crippling silence.

my arrival day was the removal. a couple days later, the mortuary visit to take care of the paperwork that death requires. it's an incredibly difficult experience - having to sign papers, agreements, review cost sheets that look a lot like a mortgage agreement. but instead of buying a home, you're purchasing the materials and services required for transportation and cremation of your loved one. the details HAVE to be made clear, and those details are unbearably difficult to listen to. they must inform you of how the body will be treated, how it will be placed, how it may need to be refrigerated if it's not picked up soon enough. i thought i was prepared to hear it all, and i was brave and listened carefully. but those words and images in my mind haunt me still, and may always. i am counting on time to blur and relieve me of those images. you think you're brave enough to view the dead and you try to be such a tough person. but when it's YOUR loved one.... no words can explain how that moment shatters every expectation you had. and then comes the inevitable ignorance and insensitivity of people who think one dead body is just like another, and if you've seen one, you've seen them all. not so. just like every dad in the world wasn't as good as mine. when your baby is born, that baby is unlike all others. death is the same way. until you lose YOURS, you have no idea how much it hurts. his memories of my childhood, his pride the day he first saw me, the wishes he held for me in his brain are inaccessible now.

there will be no funeral, no services. my brother, mother and i are mourning alone. bryan has the comfort of his wife here, who has been supportive and giving during this entire time. i may have to go home a little earlier than planned because i need my children as comfort. right now, my emotional needs are plenty, and i think that is expected and normal. my babies will help me heal because they love me unconditionally. i'm discovering, too, that my own family, my brother and mother, love me in the same way. so today, i will be leaning on them for support, as they lean on me, as we celebrate, remember, and honor my dad. happy birthday, my beloved father.