The second to last radio station on the dial acquiesced to my mental request for Red Hot Chili Pepper music.As I manipulated the squelch, the intro to "Snow" started to play. 'How appropriate' I thought, glancing out onto the February snowscape that once was the yard, the neighbour's parking lot, and the road below, now all blanched shapeless white and indigo shadows as the sun sank; tree branches a complex tangle, orange cross-hatching across the darkening sky, underlit by streetlamps. Haunting doorways began to become visable across the highway, houses you couldnt see anymore in the night mist, just doorways off into nothing with small yellow-white balls to illuminate them, make them accessible to those whole lived in the stilted homes, the rears of which floated off into the waterless sea.

In between the cover of another perfect wonder
And its all white as snow
Running through the field where all my tracks will be concealed
And theres no where to go
The Chili's sang in perfect cadence with my unenergized thoughts.I always enjoyed the band, for more than their primal eloquence...they proved to me that male energy could be melodic, harmless, introspective.
Why was I thinking of my father and his death. His marble urn buried two miles south from here, under this white blanket tonight. Dead 13 years and I was watching it happen in my head, all over again, not one earthy fraction out of place in this recanted mortality play.The hospice nurses buzzing about as my death-dreaming father called out to my mother as if she were down a well, and not running to town for emergency morphine on foot. My sleepy, just-woken self, arms folded , eyes down, standing in the corner of the living room which had become tiny with the presence of the portable hospital bed and the needing-to-be-emptied porta-potty, the contents of which would keep me far from iced tea for at least two years time.
He had tried to get up and run away, this nonsensical man, with a distended gut ,pregnant with bad-habit-become -doom. the hospice nurse simply had stood in front of him and asked him where he was going, his plight will-less, he stood, his shoulder against hers until she could angle the escapee back onto the mattress behind him, parted gown telling me much too much as he lay back down. His arms would jet out, he'd call to my mother as if she were hovering in a cloud above him.That stopped with an eerie suddenness. He lay still, breath a shallow rasp, it seemed he was only taking air in, and not exhaling. His bare feet shriveled as if they'd been submerged in water for hours, then turned blue. My mother re-appeared in the front door then, I heard the screen hinges squeak, I heard the paper sack rumple as she handed the perscription to the hospice nurse, who's face epitomized weariness. They would take the unused morphine with them when they cleaned up and the body had been removed.
I asked "is he doing that?" I nodded at my fathers chest, where the shallow half-breaths were making small quakes against the end."..or is that.. doing that?" I said, and nodded towards a strange looking respiratory machine then had been using and I wasn't sure if they still were. The woman with the stethescope, taking his pulse looked up at me without moving her head.
"He's doing that." As she had said, he'd been doing that, then he wasn't.
My exhausted mother, who had run 2 miles in the July heat to replace morphine that hospice had never received from the doctor, took her husband's freshly expired hand, and said aloud ... "..My high school sweetheart." I stared at her, with a new light in my inherited blue eyes, I didnt have pity, it wasn't endearing this scene before that had just proven that people die as they live.A simple man shafted at the very end by an unconcerned medical profession out of his painkillers, his hand held by the even simpler wife he had courted and married way back when and felt obligated to look after til death do they part, right here , in front of me.The nurses wrote stuff down, made calls.They did hospice stuff, my mother stood holding a dead hand.."say goodbye to daddy, honey" ... she said to my 24 year old self, who gave an obligated wave and wink at the ceiling. I looked at this man, with his chest covered in invisible Fuseli-like demons. Co-dependance, alcoholism, lithium-dependant depression, repressed sexuality, child abuse..received and passed forward...all these things sat there, with bulging eyes, and curved spines, fingers dangling down with eager claws...my blue eyes tingled, not with tears....with clarity. Someone told me to take my mother upstairs and suddenly a thin black line was standing in my living room with it's hands folded together in an icky professionalism. Mr. Shumway, the funeral director was there, hearse outside on my front lawn, back gate open, a terrible metal and plastic maw that needed appeasing. I took my mother upstairs and the sight of the open-gated hearse stayed with me, I watched from the upstairs window while my mother sat on the edge of the bed and cried tiny diamond-like tears in gentle little streams. I could barely see the blanket wrapped body, strapped to a guerny as it was slid into the awaiting car.But I did, I saw.It only seemed to effect me once it all was anonymous and secreted away and made other peoples business. I closed my blue eyes and let the weird pain in my forehead that had been striving to blossom do so, it was the double-crown of freedom and responsibilty pressing down, I pinched the bridge of my nose as it settled. I felt oddly alive in the presence of death....I felt ..something I would not be able to articulate until years later when I learned to accept it.Joy.Relief? Yes, I accepted the relief immediately, the pain was done.Not just his, but mine and that made for joy. I had to work at hiding my smile, from the funeral director, from the nurses until they were gone. I had to call my father's sister and deliver the news, she was as miserable (and normally as drunken) creature as he was, so it would not be fun nor easy, that tempered my ecstasies and made them more manageable at that moment.12 years later her daughter would call to share the same kind of news with me about her, but that's a whole other story.
She was gruffly mournful with the initial news but when she'd heard we'd decided on a wake before the cremation, she took my father's part. "He didn't want that!" I said, you haven't lived with my father for the last 24 years, you didn't watch all this go down, you've visited twice in 3 months because he was growing fat with death, only then because you had to drive your mother over to visit, you didnt hear the hearse just slam shut, did you.He didnt pound you in the face every time he felt like a big failure in a crudely charismatic skin.In my head that all sounded great.I said aloud.."Ayuh, whatever, would you call Grandma? I can't tell her."She said yes, I hung up. i heard the hearse slam in my head a few more times, felt the forehead pain. Grinned a little.It was true though, that I could not tell Grandma.My last grandparent and my favourite, who had taught me about painting, took me hiking, told me about Charlie Chaplin movies , made me powder milk biscuits and cocoa with homegrown mint.I couldnt tell her that her only son was dead, no, not in my mortal ken, that.
I heard the screen hinges squeak.
"Hey there, can I see Sonny?" Grandma stood there, in the middle of the dining room.Little old lady sleeveless dress, little hat, little summertime veil on top.Big square purse over her arm, two little feet in sandals, old lady painted toes protruding. The picture of ****ing innocence and hope.Sonny. Sonny's dead grandma.My turned head, dropped it's glass jaw, which shattered somehwere below my understanding of what i was about to say.I prayed for the devil to come back and make me the smily ******* of moral freedom again that i had been every few seconds when I got my face turned to the wall and away from everything else.The devil abandons you, stands abashed and feels how terrible goodness is, in the shape of a little old lady about to be in mourning.I had that edge to shove her over.I started to cry like I'd been hit in the face with a cymbal. "You can't grandma.. they just took..." I had my arms around her, in one of those desperate, honestly communing embraces.Then she made the sound.The sound I have never forgotten, nor honestly forgiven. The sound a mother makes when she understands that her child is dead. I can't repeat it, I cannot write down how it sounded, but I can never stop hearing it. The devil take that sound. She cried and cried, and i didn't let her go.Then she stopped, just like dad had stopped breathing, just like it was done with. I sent her upstairs and she waited with my mom for my mother's sisters, then the gaggle put chairs in a circle they way they used to circle wagons when the country was new and dangerous, made coffee, told old family stories, laughed, handled death like yankee women do. I...got out my notebook, smiled when the devil showed me free enterprise, frowned over all the particulars, suffered all the nightmares I'd have for about the same length of time as my aversion to iced tea. I picked up my pen, and never put it down.
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
And its all white as snow
Running through the field where all my tracks will be concealed
And theres no where to go....
******************************************************************************************************************************
The room was cute.Very square, quaint floral pattern on the walls, folding chairs.Great place for a tea social, except my dead father was lying in a rented box in one corner. I was the star of this show, the only child, the saddest one (who wasn't) the most watched one, on this day of hideous days.
He looked exactly the same. As always, undeath ruffled, just sleeping it off, in his good clothes. they'd picked his mint green polo shirt, and some white jeans, the gaggle had. Fine , that was fine, he'd have looked idiotically uncomfortable in a suit. For display and burning purposes heck, it was lovely.
I had to touch him,Closure in the form of a small reassuring "you're dead" tap, all good, you don't visit an exotic zoo and not prove your worth by petting the bengal tiger no matter your pants-filling fear, you do it or go home an eternal coward.I did it.
My fingertips grazed his wrist. his hands were folded for looking-peaceful purposes, a gesture he had never made once in life. it looked off and unnatural.Death was like that, i told myself...off. It was his skin alright, his being, but cold and hard, "Yeah OK, That's DEAD" my mind cried out to me,Dead is hard and cold and dad is dead so he is hard and cold. I chanted that inside for a few minutes. I removed a small picture of myself as a 10 year old, in a red turtle neck, standing by my mother. The picture was from the waist up, I had my arms folded doofily, and an unreal smile affixed my fat cheeks in an awkward joy. I had only felt true joy when I began frowning for the sake of others. I had crumpled the picture in my pocket and hadn't realized it. I opened it one more time, snorted at my mother's and my haircuts, crumpled it again and stuffed it into my father's folded hand. To the small crowd in the room a gesture of love, of grief and longing. i wanted the little me in the picture to be my very own scapegoat.I wanted him to take her wherever. I didn't want the responsibility of forever baby-sitting my inner child forever.She was damaged. He could take her wherever and get her fixed. Send little blue eyes to the fix it place. Ok, dad? Do me that little afterlife favour? Send her back maybe,when it's a little bit better in there, meaning the littler head with the funnier haircut.
I started to cry. I covered my face with both hands.The gaggle rushed forward as if on prerequisite cue, and I felt a hand from everyone on me, something from each one on me, Someone please bring down the curtain,PLEASE...it was like the rush of wild dogs on a fallen doe, a doe with horns.Definitely with cloven feet.

He didn't want a wake she had said. Yelled.
I see why.
*************************************************************************************************************
Three days later, dad was cremated, on my birthday.My coffee went cold, night fell , I stopped remembering for my own sake.My own bloody sake, and everyone else's.

wow!!! penster at a lose for words great write

TYVM Snoopster

That made me bawl thats all there is to it,specially the part about your grandmother. I know that was probably hard to write so thanks for sharing it. *hugs* xo

Thank You Ducky,thanks for reading with your heart and your eyes.Y'know what? it's been hard to think about forever, the writing down part was kinda like a waterfall.Gravity works.Thank you,my friend.<333

*hugs* don't you love how sometimes putting words down on paper does what nothing else can?

I don't know whether to say he.ll yeah, or amen;lol, lil bit o' both, tag , you're it Dangerous Duckness, my turn to bawl.

*hands you tissues* we have to stop this bawling..

haha, if these people could only see us with the bubey/cactus stories, laugh-bawling,ROFL...

LMAO..would they be disturbed do ya think?

*holds up thumb and index finger* A little teeny bit, I'd say, hehh..

wow..I am speechless(I know it's nothing new )But I tell ya what, ur not damaged,u walked away with ur head up...so u won..and that is something no one can take away from you..not til ur last breath...

Words to live and smile by.. thank you my friend, needed that!!!(was hoping you'd come by )

Weird what you can't see once you've actually signed in.

!!!!!BUMP!!!!!