My Darling, Who Knew?

So who just curled up in a ball in the corner of their kitchen and had one last good cry to end 2023? Just me? I figured.

I didn't intend for it to go out this way, 2023. When I decided I just wanted to stay home, sure, I knew I'd be sad, but did I think I'd be sobbing uncontrollably on my black and white tile floor? Certainly not. What I thought was, after having run ten miles earlier in the day, I'd eat some really fattening and yummy things I don't usually let myself eat, feel sad and lonely - which is obviously nothing new - sage my house, eat some grapes, toss a bucket of water out my front door, and call it night, and honestly, it might have happened like that if it hadn't been for stupid Publix and its DJ of Despair. 

There I was on my second stop of the night, Total Wine being my first since, yes, I'm not just sad and lonely, I'm a sad and lonely drunk, walking from the tortilla chip and salsa aisle to the produce section for my grapes when I heard lyrics I hadn't heard in a long, long time: "If someone said three years from now, you'd be long gone, I'd stand up and punch them out 'cause they're all wrong. I know better 'cause you said forever," and much like right this second as I type, I started getting tears in my eyes. I continued down the main aisle, taking a detour past the vegan ice cream, and as I got closer to the grapes, a new verse began: "When someone said count your blessings now, 'fore they're long gone, I guess I just didn't know how," and that time I had to force myself to not break down right there as I hobbled past the cookies and cakes. 

After stopping at Whole Foods for the ice cream I didn't buy at Publix (plus some vegan flatbread and olive tapenade (ten miles, people who read my blog! I think that warranted a feast!)), I came home, heated my flatbread, sat in uncharacteristic silence, and ate. When I finished eating, although I knew I shouldn't do it, I did it anyway. I picked up my phone, connected to Third Place on my Bluetooth, typed "Who Knew?" into the search bar, and listened as Pink sang the most painful, apropos lyrics I can't believe weren't clairvoyantly written about Jonathan and me - 

You took my hand, you showed me how / You promised me you'd be around / Uh-huh, that's right / I took your words, and I believed / in everything you said to me/ uh-huh, that's right

If someone said three years from now / you'd be long gone / I'd stand up and punch them out / 'cause they're all wrong / I know better 'cause you said forever / and ever, who knew?

Remember when we were such fools / and so convinced and just too cool? / Oh, no, no, no / I wish I could touch you again / I wish I could still call you, friend / I'd give anything

When someone said count your blessings now / 'fore they're long gone / I guess I just didn't know how / I was all wrong / They knew better, still, you said forever / and ever, who knew?

I'll keep you locked in my head / until we meet again / and I won't forget you, my friend / What happened?

If someone said three years from now / you'd be long gone / I'd stand up and punch them out / 'cause they're all wrong and / that last kiss I'll cherish until we meet again / and time makes it harder / I wish I could remember / but I keep your memory / You visit me in my sleep

My darling, who knew? -

and then there I was sitting at my table crying lightly and then standing in my kitchen crying harder and then sobbing as I sat crisscross applesauce on my kitchen floor and then lying down and sobbing in the fetal heap I mentioned before wondering if my dad was watching me as I cried and either feeling sorry for me or thinking that Jesus Christ his daughter is on a downward spiral and needs to get her life together stat and then after a few minutes of silence once the song stopped, making my way to my hands and knees and finally getting up, going into the bathroom, blowing my nose, looking in the mirror, and thinking, Jesus fuck, I look horrific.

It's been a couple hours since then. I've since finished my french toast beer, mopped my floor and saged my house all the while chanting, "Cleanse, cleanse, cleanse this place, cleanse, cleanse, cleanse this space," in an effort to cleanse I'm not quite sure what since the memory of Jonathan is the last thing I want scrubbed from my black and pink walls, but in the same vein, I plan to continue the tradition he shared with me of throwing a bucket of water outside to rid myself and my house of negative energy even though again in another same vein, the only negative energy here seems to be me, so I'm not entirely sure how that will work. 

Anyway. 

I remember as 2020 came to a close, people couldn't wait. The pandemic had fucked with so many lives, ruining mental health, draining finances, isolating people, forcing them to miss entire periods of life. I, on the other hand, loved 2020 for reasons I've discussed and won't reiterate now. Now, 2023 - that's 2020 for me. But, still, unlike those who clamored for the end of the worst year of their lives, I don't want mine to end. Like I told Jonathan when he was here the other night, I spent the majority of 2023 without him, and 2024 coming means a new year is starting out without us being together which just further solidifies what already was solid. 

The Body

Yes, yes, it's been a long time since I've written, long enough that I had to check to see what I wrote about last (surprise, surprise, it was Jonathan. Man oh Manischewitz, am I shocked). What's kept me? Why the lull in verbally transcribing my long face? 

My father died on December 3. 

My father died on December 3, and after schlepping my dogs to Orlando so my son's girlfriend could watch them, flying to Charlotte with Griffin, organizing and emptying my parents' mom's house because she and my dad were in the middle of a move down to South Florida when my father died, tying up the loose ends I could manage to tie while I was there, renting a car and driving to Orlando where I picked up my dogs and schlepped them back home and then having my mom come stay at my house while awaiting the closing on her new place, I just haven't had it in me to write. 

I wish I knew what to say. I wish I knew how to feel. But I don't. I have a very, very good friend - my oldest friend, actually, who I've known since I was four - whose wife is a self-confessed sociopath, and one of the things my friend relayed to me is that her wife said she's always acted the way she feels like she should. She would observe other people's behavior and act like that in similar situations. Now, I'm not copying anyone's behavior, and I'm pretty sure I'm not sociopathic, but I'll tell you, I'm at a loss right now. 

By the time my father died at roughly 2:15 in the morning late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, he'd been living several states away from me for over sixteen years, so saying I miss him isn't right. Other than talking to him when I would call my mom and he would answer the phone, something that had become semi-frequent in the last year or so, we didn't interact much. That's not to say we weren't close although I don't think we were although who's really to say what defines closeness? He did send me a shopping bag with Hudson's and Jazzy's faces imposed onto each side after they died and a recycling-bin mug to thank me for making him see the importance of recycling and little magnet hooks for my fridge after I admired his and a pretty little bag that looks Mexican since that's what I think I was in a past life, and he did ask me gently if he could ask me what happened between me and Jonathan when the two of us broke up and send me a vegan recipe for cacio e pepe afterwards telling me he hoped I felt better plus other little emails he thought would interest me here and there, so going back to being close, were we close? Maybe not particularly, but writing this now, it occurs to me that he did always try to show me he loved me in the ways that he knew how. 

And yet here I am, two weeks and two days after my father died, two weeks to the day after I walked into a funeral home and saw his unprepared body lying under a sheet, not knowing how to feel. I know that I loved my father, and I know that I'm sad, but I also know that if I compare the way I feel now to the depths of sadness I felt when Hudson and Jazzy died and the torrents of tears I cried for them to the tears I've cried for him, I'm ashamed. The sadness - if sadness is the word because more than sadness, what I feel is disbelief; I just can't believe that my father is no longer here - isn't omnipresent but rather it accompanies certain thoughts. I don't have a father anymore, I'll think to myself, and then I'll picture him lying under that sheet. I'll look at the yahrzeit candle glowing in my kitchen, and although I hadn't forgotten my father was dead, seeing it will make me realize it again. I love you, Dad, I'll whisper, but once away from the candle, it's like I once again forgot-but-not-forgot. 

Having a dead parent is a weird thing, or at least it is for me. I'm forty-eight, yes, a good age to have a parent until, far older than many, and while it makes no sense, the thought that I'm an orphan drifts through my mind (yes, I know I have a mom; I'm telling you, my thoughts make no sense). Still, it's not a feeling of sadness that I feel with that thought, but emptiness, I think? That's it. When I think about my dad having died, when I think about his no longer being here, when I think about his no longer being with me, I feel empty more than I feel sad. Fatherless. 

Like -

like something is gone. 

Like something is gone. 

No. Not like something is gone; 

because something is gone. 

Something is gone. 

Something is gone. 

My father. 

My father is gone. 

And now I know. 

What I feel is empty and fatherless.

I am empty and fatherless.

My father has gone.