superflea

So I've been back for a couple of weeks or so. I stayed for a while with my mom to help get some of my dad's affairs settled, and then I actually got the sense that it would be okay to leave and return south.

I'm dealing with things as best I can. Some days I feel awful, some days I feel okay and then I feel bad that I don't feel worse, and most days I do okay. I miss my dad so much that even attempting to find the words for it feels futile. (I wanted to say quixotic, but I'm not entirely certain that it means what I think it means.)

There are three things that hit me particularly hard about losing him. Firstly, I really wanted to make him a grandfather, because he would have been such an amazing one. He was very smart, very entertaining, a great storyteller, a great musician, handy and crafty, and all the things that would make my children think their grandpa was the most amazing man on the planet. I don't know that I'll ever be able to find the words to get across what a great man he was, and it would have been so easy to get that across if they could only had the chance to meet him. Granted, I'm probably still a couple of years away from being ready for kids myself, but more than anything, I wish those kids could have met their grandfather.

Secondly, I wish that I'd found a nice stable job before he passed (and at least there has since been some positive news, and things are looking very promising with a cool company in the GTA), because I didn't want him worrying about me. I know that I'll be okay, and I know that he knew I'd be okay, but I wish there'd been closure on more of the hits that I've taken this year.

Finally, he'd been asking me to come up and record him performing a few songs, and I just never had the tools to do it. It would have been something really fun to do together, and it would have made such a great keepsake, even if just to hear his voice whenever I wanted to. I think there are some old 4-track recordings around the house, and I know that there are a few old mementos I can dig up when I'm ready to track it down. He has some memoirs that he wrote on a laptop he later gave to me. He asked me to delete them, and of course I didn't, but I'm not ready to look at them just yet. They'll be there when I need them.

But my family hung together and pulled through. The visitation and the funeral were both packed, and we had a really great memorial service. Dad would have really liked it. People came from all over to be with us, and we couldn't have imagined the volume of cards, calls, gifts, and visits we'd receive from people who knew, loved, and respected my dad. If his funeral was in any way a measure of how he lived his life, then he sure did well.

Anyways, I just figured I'd say that I'm back and I'm doing okay, and I appreciated everybody who stopped by my blog or sent a PM to extend their condolences. The job hunt is going well and I'm optimistic that I might be able to return to living in Toronto soon. And that's what's up.

Oh, and here's one for the nerds: I also may have hypothetically gotten a beta key for a certain massively multiplayer online rpg that may hypothetically have an expansion coming out in the new year. If I had played said beta (and I'm not saying I did), I probably wouldn't say a ton about it just in case I didn't read the TOS clearly and they'll send legions of lawyers to eat my eyes if I write anything about it. But if I did hypothetically play this hypothetical beta, I bet I'd probably want to tell you that it was pretty goddamned fantastic.