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.

just bloggin' some great pictures I've discovered over the past few weeks,
while cleaning my dad's house and going through his files.

Today was rough... just when you think you're kinda doing ok with
the whole life~and~death thing, sometimes that fog rolls in again
and you're back at square one. So, to cope, I spent the day getting
the pictures on the computer, so I can print them up (I resized some
for my grandpa.)

The first picture below is my favorite. Apparently, my dad was kinda a goofball when he was in his late teens, hahaha! (19 or so in this pic.) :) Wearing his Beethoven t-shirt.



the picture below makes me realize just how tall my dad was...
it also makes me realize I wish I could have known my dad,
back when he was this age, cuz this is four or five years
before he even had me. Who was this guy? He wrote on the back
of this photo something comical, with a bunch of exclamation points
and everything... "Hey! I found that part you needed!!!"




This picture below is my dad's airforce picture (the above ones
were in the barracks or something.)




This is my grandpa and my dad... check out grandpa's cool leather jacket!




grandma and my dad as a baby... I love this picture of her and my dad.




another picture of my grandma holding my dad, she loved him so much. :)

Me and my dad. This picture makes me happy. I miss him, but he's a part of the universe now, the whole entire universe, not just here on Earth. I can feel him around me a lot of the time (not all of the time, because that would just be creepy, like if I felt my dad was around me when I'm pooping on the toilet or something!) I know he's ok.

I miss you, Dad. But we'll see each other again, on the other side someday.

sadness can feel like chapstick-tubes going through your veins. sideways. tears hurt with a sting on dry lips. pools of dried salt cause pimples on your neck, when you cry in your sleep or when driving along with burning eyes that just let it all go unexpectedly. Usually on highways.

sadness can feel like a glass of seltzer water, bubbles clinging to the sides, some deep at the bottom that are prone to rising up, popping, sometimes causing a bunch of other bubbles to pop all at once. You throw in some icecubes, hoping to water things down as they melt.

sadness can feel like a shiver of cold that freezes you to the bones, or hot like walking into a small kitchen with no airconditioning after a dishwasher has gone through a drying cycle in the burning heat of August.

sadness isn't a constant. we're just not built that way, none of us. everybody seeks ways outta being sad. we stop reading newspapers, we shut off tvs. or we read the newspaper and watch tv... depends what you let your mind take in and what you skip past by flipping to the next page or channel.

we look out windows or take dogs for walks. we sit and listen to music that makes us happy. or music that makes us sad, to just let a few bubbles rise and disappear in a pop. we play a game. we listen to somebody talk who has a way of cheering us up. we read. I read Douglas Adam's Resataurant at the End of the Universe in one day, which is unusual for me to read any book, no matter how short, in a twenty-four hour period. But I did, because I needed a smile and once I got it in just one paragraph, I didn't want it to stop. So I just kept reading. What a great book to read when you're looking for a reason to laugh about life and how goofy it can get.

Thanks, Mark/Marvin/bl, again.

we sit in the sunshine and watch trains go by on a track that goes on to places with a mile of train cars and cargo, probably peanuts and oranges. we listen and watch children play and hair on bouncing heads over mole holes, golf carts can go pretty fast. we eat icecream.

we smoke cigarettes and look forward to a time in life when we can quit smoking.

I think of the home-made movies I have in this house and wonder when I'll be able to watch them without going back to chapstick-tubed veins full of sadness. I've so much footage of my dad, and I want to hear his voice again, like in the clip Tim made, if only through speakers on a television set. But I've gotta wait a tiny bit more, because although I'm getting stronger, I need a little bit more time. The fog lifted in Florida. I'm breathing in without my heart aching, and my mind has accepted things, but the bubbles still float to the top now and then in the seltzer water glass stage.

March is right around the corner. February hasn't much been a good month in my life. A lot of crappy things have happened in February throughout my life. It's not February's fault or anything, and some great things have happened in Februaries, too. I like when it snows in February and the day after we got home it snowed heavily. It was a very good snowfall, gigantic snowflakes. A great snow-show.

Sadness can change from snow to sleet to rain. Or from rain to sleet to snow.

Thank gosh for the change of seasons in New England. I'm looking forward to the spring.

He never made it to Boston.

http://www.semara.org/k1ibr.html

A couple of things I've learned over the past dozen days. Time doesn't begin healing for a while... in fact, the time going by is making things worse. It feels like a greater distance is being created by the number of days my father has been gone. It's making me miss him more, and if time had a pause button, I'd push it. Because I'm pretty damn weak at this point. I'd pause it in order to build up some kinda strength. The days just add up to more time I haven't talked with my pops. Everything feels off kilter. Everything feels like out of sync. I'm a freakin' mess, in a fog, but somehow it's only making me work harder, think slower, and although inside I feel slow-motion, I'm busy-busy-busy in spite of being more tired than I've ever been in my life. I want to sleep for a month.

I've learned that, as usual, when something sad happens, something brutally sad and unfair, I, as usual, tend to run away in one way or another. Physically and/or mentally. We're going to Florida for a few days. Initially, we were going to use our tax refund money for plane tickets to florida for Christmas 2007, but as it became more and more obvious my dad was going to die, all I could think of was the big tree in Ken's dad's front yard in Florida. All I could think of was the sound of the boys laughing in the fields behind Ken's dad's house. All I could think of was quiet foggy mornings in Florida. And that matches my mood... quiet and foggy. All I want to do is run, run, run away. Even knowing the ol' 'wherever you go, there you are' aspect. I know thoughts of my dad will be with me in Florida. I know I can't run away from any of this. But I do know that there's a calmness there that will help me to come to grips with all of this. Thankfully, Kenny and the kids agreed that running away to Florida was a fantastic idea, and nobody poked fun at me for being such a pussy.

I learned that my children are incredibly strong and capable of handling things a lot better and maturely than I ever could have fathomed. I learned that my dad's family is the most amazing, eccentric, intelligent, funny group of people that far surpassed everything I already knew about them when it comes to coping with life's tragedies. I'm positive the only reason I am currently not in a straight-jacket is because of the incredible family I'm surrounded by... as well as my dad's phenomenal foresight and logic to put into place so much dark humor post-death situations, to help me cope. Although I'm amused, highly, by my dad's antics, which I'm pretty sure he put into place only weeks prior to his death, I'm more in a sense of awe of his intelligence now than even before his death. Not that prior to his death I didn't respect his wisdom and logic... but it's grown, which I never would have figured to be possible. I've enjoyed the challenges and the adventures he's had me embark upon. It's been and continues to be an honor to be Bill Miller's daughter.

This Sunday I go to see my dad's ashes. It will either thicken the fog or lift it; I just don't know. Either way works, I can function in either scenerio, so it's a reverse catch-22.


There's so many moments from the six weeks of my father's final journey that I want to write about. Someday I will.

Just a cool, trippy video that my kids showed me tonight. Funky and interesting.

If ever a video encapsulated entirely how I feel, at this moment in life, this one would be it. The empty pianos surrounding him, fortelling him his fate, singing his song anyways, trying his best to just go on... being overwhelmed by wave after wave, until he's knocked off the stool.

There's just such force in waves crashing in, one right after the other. And if the pushing doesn't work, the ocean will do its best to make the piano unplayable... make your song drown, and you with it.

The part where his hand is reaching out of the ocean water to just touch those piano keys, trying so hard to keep the melody going. That's the part of the video I'm at in life. Just trying so hard to rise above almost too many things going so wrong, all at once.

My dad just gets weaker and weaker. He must feel the same way I do right now. Actually, probably even more so than I do. Life's full of such adversity and challenges sometimes. He's got so many songs left to play on his piano. I can't even imagine life without his music... he's stubborn, though, so I'm keeping a strong sense of hope, and he is, too. But there's this underlying current, and there has been since his battle started, that things may not end well. That's been the strangest part. Most times, if not *every* time, when things have gone awry for anybody in this family, the underlying current has been one of almost obnoxious optimism, good humor and a determination to pull through. Not that this current situation is void of any of that... optimism, humor and determination are there, but there almost seems to be an unusual amount of blunt acceptence that things might end with an empty piano stool. Mainly from my dad himself, which has blown me away. I've never known him to give up on anything. He is the epitomy of endurance. But he's also extraordinarily logical.

And that's just one of the pounding waves currently crashing. I'm pretty much at a soft whisper of a hum right now. The music inside never fully dies. I look around me and see so many positive things and aspects with areas in life that not long ago were a bit eroded, and I'm trying to find strength and comfort in things that are going right.

Part of me, while watching that video, just wants to walk right over to that piano, lift it up over my head, and put it far, far up the beach. And I actually think I'd have the strength to do that. Even in the sand. Away from the ocean and all those waves. I want to grab that lead singer and lift him up over my shoulders and bring him to saftey, too. Then I want to just sit in the sand dunes and hear every other song he has to sing.

I don't think Boston would be any better than California for the chick in this song... when you're at that spot in life, and who hasn't been there, it's better to pick a place like Nebraska. Or Guam.

But I agree with the lyrics that some snow would be nice. And I'm tired of the sunsets, too, and could use some sunrises myself. Which I guess is why I got up at 4:30 a.m. this morning. It was a very comforting sunrise.

My pops better pull through.