Only the words in italics made me cry - what a voice on Christina.

Seems like it was yesterday when I saw your face
You told me how proud you were,

but I walked away

If only I knew what I know today
Ooh, ooh
I would hold you in my arms
I would take the pain away
Thank you for all you've done
Forgive all your mistakes
There's nothing I wouldn't do
To hear your voice again
Sometimes I wanna call you
But I know you won't be there

Ohh I'm sorry for blaming you
For everything I just couldn't do
And I've hurt myself by hurting you

Some days I feel broken inside but I won't admit
Sometimes I just wanna hide 'cause it's you I miss
And it's so hard to say goodbye
When it comes to this, oooh

Would you tell me I was wrong?
Would you help me understand?
Are you looking down upon me?
Are you proud of who I am?

There's nothing I wouldn't do
To have just one more chance
To look into your eyes
And see you looking back

Ohh I'm sorry for blaming you
For everything I just couldn't do
And I've hurt myself, ohh

If I had just one more day
I would tell you how much that I've missed you
Since you've been away
Ooh, it's dangerous
It's so out of line
To try and turn back time

I'm sorry for blaming you
For everything I just couldn't do
And I've hurt myself by hurting you

First dad's day without dad around here on Earth... first thing I did this morning, to brighten the day, was stick up this new shower curtain. Kinda hard to put up a happy monkey shower curtain and be depressed. I was going to put it up last night, but decided today would be the perfect day to start off by gazing at a bunch of silly smiling monkeys. It worked, too, because I immediately felt less sad as I was putting it up.

Now I'm going to embark upon a list of small, happy projects... I'm cleaning Kenny's car for dad's day, as well as my car. Then I'm gonna do some stuff in the backyard with KC, and then we'll go get Kenny's new grill and help put it together. I've got some paperwork/files to do, but I think it'll be a better idea if I wait to do those later this week, because it's a really, really pretty day outside. I think I'll just cook up some goodies for Kenny and the boys.

Just in case there's internet on the other side of life: Happy father's day, Dad! I miss you!

Somebody posted this picture on a forum I frequent, and I made it my computer monitor's background. Prior to the picture of the puffer-fish my background was a picture of the galaxy from the NASA website, also posted on a forum I frequent.

The person who posted the picture of the puffer-fish wondered why people would eat them... they are a cute fish, but being cute has never stopped a human from wanting to kill you and eat you. I was always under the impression that puffer-fish were poisonous, but after reading wikipedia (mostly accurate, mostly harmless...), I found out there are ways to eat puffer-fish without killing yourself (not that I plan to try puffer-fish in my lifetime.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pufferfish

I love the picture of the puffer-fish... makes me smile. Freaked out my boys, when they saw it on my monitor, got us into a discussion about their puff-defense look compared to their really cute "Don't eat me!" look. Something else I didn't know about puffer-fish: if they are swallowed by a bigger fish, the puffer-fish can chew it's way out. Now THAT is a strong survival instinct and an incredible survival tool to have.

I remember many times in my life when I felt just like I was chewing myself outta the tummy of a predator. A few years ago, when a bunch of poop was going on, I felt like that. A big portion of my childhood felt like that. Now, aside from sad bumps in life, I feel like the happy, smiling puffer-fish... just swimming around the ocean. Swimming around, listening to this song:



:)

here's a sunshiney picture of me and my brothers... yellow shirts, brown pants, ahhhh... the 70s.

Nikki found this framed picture down in the cellar, in a box Tim had put together while sorting out radio equipment. Nikki immediately said "did you draw this, mom?"... I didn't remember drawing it, but it sure looked like something I would draw. I don't know how or why it ended up in a frame down in my dad's radio room, but my name is on it (although it doesn't look like my signature, I usually write 'Capri' in semi-cursive, but it is my type of drawing and it was my nickname.)




Some things I noticed that were so sad about the drawing... the face, the hands are balled up and seem to be in fists.









The drawing depresses me. I know I've felt that way in my lifetime, but I look at my life now and it's so positive and clear-headed; looking at that picture I drew reminds me that it has not always been a positive life.

I don't remember giving this picture to my father - he may have found it in my room after I left home at age 15 to get my own apartment. My name almost was cut off of it, probably to fit the frame.

I'm done with the photoalbums now. Next up is the reorganizing of the file cabinets and files... that's a project that will take a few years to actually finish. So many things to read. For now my aim is to just get them organized in order of importance- for the most part, my dad had everything very organized, I'm just doing the final organizing. Some things have to be continued and completed, like a great family tree and text-based/photo-based history of the family he had going, both offline and online. Thankfully, he left all passwords for me to access websites he was working on, so I won't have to start from scratch. That's been one of the buffers in all of this sadness... my dad left a lot of fun projects to do. The family tree is incredibly interesting. My goal is to spend this coming winter season of November 2007 - March 2008 reading everything my dad had filed, because this summer and autumn are going to be spent playing at the ponds and beaches, going geocaching, and basically trying to get back into the spirit of life, love and laughter.

Yesterday was a great start to that... we took the boys minigolfing and puttered around Cape Cod. :) Today is rainy, but a day indoors just relaxing will be nice.

With only a few more projects here at homebase to accomplish, and only a few projects left at dad's house to complete, by the time the boys get out of school on June 15th, I'll be ready to put on my sneakers and shorts and a tshirt and feel some sunshine on my face.

I've got my towel. :)
...and only 75 pages left of SLATFATF. Doug Adams is the best writer to have ever lived.

My dad had a great garden in the year 1980. I don't remember much of the early 80s, but one thing I do recall is this garden... it was a place of calm and solace. I'd sit and eat cucumbers and snowpeas, and for most of that summer and autumn, I think I could have been considered an honorary vegetarian. I was often stuffed full of fresh picked veggies and barely touched my dinner. My dad is most likely talking to whomever took this photo and telling them about either the string he put up for the snowpea and cucumber climbing vines, or he's talking about the tree right next to his garden. I can hear his voice when I look at this picture; I like that I haven't forgotten how his voice sounds. I can hear him, loud and clear.

Maybe I am nuts.

I'm pretty sure I am nuts, because as much as it breaks my heart, I keep something on my computer desk my aunt found in one of my dad's various photograph boxes. My dad kept over a thousand photos in different boxes - a shoebox, a 4-set of glass tumblers box, a weird box for an electronic part, and other boxes of all shapes and sizes, but all cardboard boxes. My aunt helped out by arranging all of the photos for me by year, so I could transfer them to photo albums. While sorting through all of the pictures, she found a little card.

The day she brought it out to show me, I read it and held it and just cried. The most painful cry I had this year. But I was glad my Aunt found it, and I was glad my dad kept it.

Apparently, in October of 1975, I gave my dad what looks like an Easter card, as it has a bunny on it. I was seven years old at the time, I must have slipped it in with the mail, as I drew a little fake stamp on the envelope, along with a return-addy. My dad wrote the date he got it on the back of the envelope and kept it all of these years.







Every time I look at it, I go through a barrage of emotions, but every day I look at it also reminds me of how lucky I was in the first place to have a dad I could write a card like that to, and how much he must have loved that card to have kept it for 30+ years. There definitely were times my father must have questioned if I loved him, if I respected him, if I understood him - I wonder if that card was his solace, or if that card broke his heart... because a few times in my dad's life I made it very clear to him that my love for my parents was very conditional, my respect negotiable and reliant on the truth, and my understanding only possible with brutal honesty. One thing is for sure - my dad, at the end of his life, completely loved, respected and understood me, and knew I did love, respect and understand him. He also let me know, not with a card, but with words, that he agreed with me on some things we'd debated about for years and years. Except for one thing - he didn't agree with me that death is another side of life. He really tought that it was just 'lights out' whereas I think our energy goes on and on for an eternity.

I know he's out there in the universe right now happy that his theory was wrong.

And not shocked at all that his daughter was right. (or at least I like to think of it in this way, hahaha!)

Man, I miss him.

"The world isn't the same place anymore for you. Your whole world changed," she said to me on the phone. That sums this year up for me. She's a cribbage player I used to see every week... but I haven't been to play in a cribbage tournament at the club in six months.

In January, I stopped going because I was usually at the hospital visiting with my dad. In February, when he died, I was home trying to be here for the kids as I'd pretty much not been around much for six weeks. In March, between moving Nikki and preparing for April's memorial for my dad, and other stuff going on, I still couldn't find time on Wednesdays for the cribbage club. In April, when a lot of dad stuff was taking place, I again had no time. But in May... in May I crashed. I had no more reasons, no more excuses, but I still didn't and haven't gone back to play cribbage on Wednesdays.

I can't seem to get back into some parts of my usual routine in life. I'm unusually afraid of people dying... and all of my hobbies include people who are up there in years... cribbage, Scrabble, volunteering. Didn't go to the Scrabble tournament this year for the first time ever, but dad's ash scattering took place that weekend, but I wonder if I'd have gone if it hadn't been? I'm hoping this fear, this overwhelming fear of anybody else dying, subsides soon. But every time I try to get back into my prior pattern with life, my heart hurts. My stomach aches to the point I feel like it's on fire. My mind seems to shut down, too. All I want to do is be alone (and that's not like me.)

Parts of my routine stopped abruptly with my dad's passing... Monday night dinners at his house, which we went to once a week for eight years, since moving an hour's drive away to Cape Cod. Yearly family Scrabble tournaments between my dad, Kenny and I stopped abruptly. I'm not sure, but I think part of the reason I'm having a hard time getting back into other patterns and grooves that still exist is because my mind is stuck like a skipping record on the bump of my dad's death. My mind can't seem to get over that scratch in life's surface. Eventually it will have to, but I'm going to have to give it time... I already learned that trying to force myself to just move on to some things before I'm ready will lead me to feeling wiped out and extremely and brutally sad and angry.

It's June. The year is half-way over.

I found out that the picture above is not my grandmother... it's her sister, Lily, holding my dad. I felt so silly, as I had made 4 copies of it, framed them, and brought them to the Sunday family gathering to give out to my aunts and grandpa. It looks so much like my grandmother! I felt like such the token dumb-blonde, haha!

As it turns out, my grandmother's sister, Lily, had 4 children, and they are all still alive. So, my aunt gave the framed photos of their mom holding my dad to them. I saw them all at the memorial BBQ we held at my dad's house this weekend, and also at the dedication ceremony held at the radio club. We also did what my father wanted done with his ashes. I couldn't speak much at all this weekend. My throat was as clenched as my heart was. I cried a lot during the scattering of my dad's ashes. I tried not to, because I wanted to see it as something positive and not something sad, but it was impossible not to recognize it for the incredible loss of future moments with my dad it was. Still, I feel pretty damn blessed to have had him in our lives all the years we did.

I kept waking up each morning for the past week or so at the time my father passed away, just as I had the few days prior to his passing as well as the day he passed. I'm pretty sure right now I'm just suffering insomnia, and not in some 'wide awake little-sleep needed' phase, cuz during the day I am freakin' tired as all heck. My stomach hurts a lot, I threw up yesterday like crazy all morning. It might be the tummy flu my little guy, Winter, had last week. I haven't thrown up in probably over a year, so I was aching hardcore from it.

Lately, when I'm feeling really bummed out about my dad's death, I watch this video:



Someday I'm gonna visit New Zealand. The song in that video brightens my day, as well as the scenery.

Have been so busy with my dad's house, cleaning it, organizing stuff, reading stuff, looking at pictures. Going through over half a century of memories takes a lot of time. Here at my own house, I sometimes watch videos of my dad and just remember all the wonderful days we had at his house and our house here on Cape Cod. I remember the talks, the laughs, the amazing gifts he left to us, things he taught us, things he knew would be useful for a lifetime of logical living.

We're moving some of the house items to our home this weekend, as well as moving Nikki to her new place in the old hometown. The next few months will be busy, but not as hectic as the past four months have been. This past weekend sorta marked the closure of things, even though there's still many other things to situate.

Since 1995, my dad, Kenny and I had a yearly family Scrabble tournament. The losers had to buy the winner a trophy (wall plaque, declaring the person a Scrabble Champion.) Today I'm picking up Kenny's Scrabble trophies... one for 2006, and one for 2007. Kenny only knows about the 2006 one. What he doesn't know is that because of the one game of Scrabble we played with my dad in early January, a game Kenny won, I bought one final Scrabble trophy for him, a really big one, with a clock on it, to show that time, life, and Scrabble will go on, even though we've felt so crushed inside by my dad's death. On the 2006 trophy, along with Kenny's name and the year, as well as the words "Scrabble Champion", it says "You and my dad planned this!" and on the 2007 one it says "Based on ONE GAME." Kenny will get a kick outta that. So would my dad. :(

I'm having a hard time with being so sad inside my heart and mind so often... I'm having a hard time with crying so much, too. But I know that it's all a part of grief, so I'm just going with it. Eventually things will get back to normal, except that my dad won't be alive anymore even when things are back to normal... that's the part I'm struggling with most. Knowing that when something great happens, I can't call my dad up on the phone or see him in person and talk with him about it. Knowing that when I have a dilema, I can't ask for his advice. Knowing that when I write something he'd enjoy reading, I can't email him it. Knowing that those warm, spring days of playing Scrabble in the pinegrove won't be happening this year or in the years to come. Knowing that his Monday night dinners are gone forever. I try to just be glad that I had the time with my dad, but I keep just feeling like I got ripped off... that my dad got ripped off, years of his life. It just doesn't feel fair, we worked so hard to repair our relationship as father and daughter, I wanted decades more with him, because he was such a good dad, such a good grandfather, such a good friend. The person I got to know the past 20 years was a man I had enormous respect for... and to lose him just hurts so much.

I gotta stop hurting this much. I hope to feel less aching in my heart about it as time goes by, but some days it feels like the sadness grows, and other days I feel peacefulness for my dad and his passing... I almost feel excited for him, knowing he knows it all now. The meaning of life and death, the whole 'what happens when we die' aspect.

There's a closet I'm going through this weekend at my dad's house that I pretty much figure is gonna make me cry... his box of magic tricks is in there. He'd do performances at family gatherings and birthday parties. The boys are going to try to learn all of the magic tricks my dad, their grandfather, did so they can carry on the tradition. Most of the tricks are pretty easy (my dad showed us how he did all of them.) Maybe I won't cry... maybe I'll smile and hear him say Abracadabra, maybe I'll just feel my sadness lift away, as if by magic.

I sure hope so.