Right.
Tabla rasa. New Year. Figure out the title after I figure out what I’m doing. But then again, that’s a bit of life right there, isn’t it?
Don’t it always seem to go
that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone…
Christmas was good. I mean, it really was great to hang out with my brother and sisters. We had a video chat with Beau and met Emily and baby Eissa.
Such a tiny thing. Her head there cradled in the palm of his hand. We couldn’t do the Oyzon circle in meatspace, but managed to do it anyhoo. Benny, Leece, Laine and me huddled around the laptop on our end; Beau on his. Took a video snap.
I love them.
The grandboys were loud and energetic.
So, yeah. It was good.
But dad wasn’t there, and his absence is tangible still. I hadn’t been back since the after the funeral. We kept it light and we joked and reminisced and none of it was awful. Zombie dad. I don’t even remember how it started. I think it was Curtis. How dad would be saying in his thick filipino accent, “Gosh almighty, you don’t even have a brain.”
“Too soon?”
Tears from laughing. No. Not too soon. Necessary.
(pretty sure that’s Elaine being zombie dad).
I didn’t lose it until we got home. Like last year, we drove home on the 30th. I remember getting the phone call as we pulled into the driveway after the eight hour drive. Elaine’s tearful voice.
So New Year’s eve was spent getting ambushed by tears.
I’m almost back. Been thinking about how there was a happy positive person in this being once upon a time. I miss her. She hasn’t been around in a long while.
A long while.
Between bouts of tears, I gathered belongings and trashed or packed up things I no longer used or needed or touched or couldn’t remember or actively forgot. Cleaning house. Airing my own mind.
