snow? SNOW?!

Sick again. Feel like it hasn't really left me from the January bout, and keeps rearing it's head. And that head is snotty, indeed.

Strange week, lots of sad anniversaries this week. This is when my dad first collapsed into a coma, a day which remains extremely vivid in my mind, and one which I still can not really talk about, or dwell on. Yeah, that's a portion of the journey that still really terrifies me. For the most part, I have been recovering from the year with much aplomb, I think, but the occasional stab in the heart still catches me by surprise. I have entered this very strange phase of thinking he's alive. It's confusing. Because I have also realized he is never never coming back, but...oh, I haven't quite put it all into words yet. I have a tattoo on my right shoulder of a heart with wings, I got it right after my dad died. I got a scratch right in the middle of the heart and it is bleeding, so it looks like the heart is bleeding. Weird day.

This sensation of his being alive started a couple of weeks ago, the night before my brother left for South Asia. (The bum is laying on a beach as we speak). We were hanging out with a bunch of friends and my brother started telling the story of the time he got the day of a very important flight wrong and nearly had a breakdown with worry. Our dad woke up early and came down to see what the ruckus was and gave him a ride to the airport. When Jesse (my brother) was telling the story, he quoted our dad and for some reason, right for that moment, I completely forgot he was dead. I just thought about how we would laugh about it the next day. It made me feel sort of floaty and out of my own skin, and relieved, and a bit confused. He was so very alive for me in that moment. I didn't tell my brother, he was so relaxed that night, I didn't want to make him cry, and it would have.

Then I went and read "The Way the Crow Flies" by Anne-Marie MacDonald. I actually managed not to sob and sob at the end, mostly because I'm sick and I don't feel like aggravating my snot factory any further. But it was a monumental effort not to just roll up into a little ball and cry and cry and cry. The main character took me right back into myself as a child, and it was like I was revealed to myself. It's been a long time since I related to a work of fiction on such a profound level.

Oy, my head hurts.

x
r.