Life Goes On

    As some of you know, my father did not win his battle with pancreatic cancer.  We lost him a week and a half ago.  I've been intending to write a post about the events of the last couple of weeks but somehow I just haven't been able to.  Every time I pull up this blog and try to write, I just can't think of any words.

    So many people who have been important to me and to my family over the years have reached out to us during this difficult time.  And somehow it seemed that any time I was just overcome with the grief and stress of the situation, I would hear from someone who would say just the right thing to pull me through.  I heard from all sorts of people who had good things to say about my father, or had stories about him to share.  We reconnected with family members we haven't seen in years, and people who knew us when I was a little girl.  I even heard from someone who I believed I would never talk to again, which meant more to me than I can say. 

    I don't know how I would have gotten through the past couple of weeks without so many people to lean on.

    The day after my father died, before most people knew he was gone, we were sitting in the funeral home trying to make arrangements for the service.  The man who was helping us left the room for a moment to check on something.  I made the mistake of glancing up and saw the rest of my family (minus The Kidd) sitting around the table, and it really hit me that my father was gone.  He was never going to sit around a table with us again; he was never going to be the one to take charge and make the difficult decisions for us again.  I started to feel like I couldn't breathe, and though I knew it would be terrible for me to break down right then I started to tear up anyway.  Trying to distract myself, I pulled out my phone and when I saw the cheerful little blinking green light I checked my email.   And there waiting for me in my inbox was exactly what I needed: a message from a dear friend who has lost a parent, who knows what it feels like.  He sent me the sweetest message, that had me tearing up again but for a different reason.  The panicked, hysterical feeling started to fade away as I read his message.  As much as the rest of it meant to me, the part that had the strongest impact on me was the very last line, where he told me something that no one else had mentioned - that this feeling won't get better, but will only dull. 

    As strange as it may seem, I needed to hear that.  My father is gone, but we aren't ever going to forget him.  This isn't something we are going to get over.  Tomorrow he will still be gone and we will still miss him.  That's okay; it's normal.   And it's something we can live with.

    I stayed with my mom after Caradorn and The Kidd had left, to help her work out some details that needed to be dealt with.  A few days later I headed back to Rocket City.  I didn't have my car there so I drove my dad's car back home.  For the first few miles as I drove out of town I kept the radio off.  Somehow it seemed disrespectful to be cruising along in my father's sports car listening to music so soon after losing him.  He loved driving that car.  I didn't feel right enjoying it, knowing he wouldn't be enjoying it ever again.  I felt guilty.  But after a few miles I finally couldn't take the quiet and the rumble of the tires against the road any longer and so I turned on the radio.  The song that was playing was one I've never heard on the radio before.  I didn't know any station ever played it.  It was "Pancreas" by Weird Al.

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    I couldn't help but laugh.  My dad would have found it funny.  He would have wanted me to keep finding things funny, to keep living . . . to enjoy driving a fun car with the windows down on a beautiful day, listening to music.   Life goes on.  We will always miss my dad, but we still have each other, and all the other people we love.  I'm still sad, and still angry.  It isn't fair that he's gone, that he didn't get to retire and do all the things he hoped to do, that he got so sick and was so miserable for his last few weeks.  But his life was so much more than the last months.  He loved life, and he loved us, and he loved for us to be happy.  He wouldn't want us to stop living, to stop embracing life, just because of the way he left us.  I know we will get through this, and even though things will never be the same,  we will still have good times.  Our lives aren't over just because my father is no longer with us, and no one would be happier about that than he would be.