On this day, 10 years ago(!), my father passed away
The scope and scale of the time, the life in between now and then is entering a new phase, a new level of focus. The relevance of the childhood, young-adult development grief is giving way to some more “adult” phenomenon. I’m an individual, it is (only) in my perception that the sense of being [overshadowed] exists.
For some many years after his passing, being a quite uncertain artist who was a lot more [stuck in one place] than he was at my age, I felt a little insufficient.
I can strike out on my own path, carve out whatever this “identity” is. But there is also this kind of pervading part of me that stays that young, that tender or unformed, as I was then. I am the child of this person, and I was a kind of child when he passed suddenly — our relationship calcified in that moment then then then.
He: doesn’t see me grow up, he doesn’t give me advice, he doesn’t laugh with his brother over the dinner table…
Those moments [frozen] in a time quite (un)like this. And the relative impossibility of transmuting those things to this life I have [now].
It all swims together in this moment, though. I don’t mean to posit this all as so linear. Clearly these plaes and times still ring on: my visit to the house where I grew up, sacred ground in a way. Sacred - just for me, maybe, but gosh it’s so heavy and loaded with [it] there.
I miss my dad. And it’s dizzying to try to understand that I lost him 10 years - ten years! - ago. Maybe because of this growing tension between the person I am in my grief (that child / 19-y.o., etc.) and the person I am in my life [now] - the practical shape my life has taken since; who I am now.
This impossible endeavor of retaining and — taking care of that person, that small and tender me inside all this else. That person needs care, affection — the source of which doesn’t walk this earth anymore.
It’s best expressed by clumsy, blatant, terse and straight-forward phrases:
I want to talk to my dad
I miss my dad
Why isn’t my dad here?
Why can’t I talk to him?
His side-cocked walk, his expectant look, his voice, the chores and travels and dinners — improvised pastas and Costco lasagnas. The simpler shape life and everyday concerns take in youth. Complex in youth but simple in looking back.
What is in that mystery of domestic life? How can it be so different in its orientation from what comes after, outside in public? What is it to have those thoughts, write them down and hold them somewhere close to the chest?..
How does this happen for/to/with others?
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I feel you, in this moment,
inside the movement of the joints of my fingers.
In the gentle tapping on this table
In the churning din of this airplane cabin, this diversity.
The shapes and gestures my hands can make, the [intuited] movements, figurations, the [aikidoistic] articulations: the poise and focus and seeking.
What a fool ever to be tricked into seriousness, soft hearted, hard hearted.
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This young father next to me, his partner and child. And how people look at themselves in the mirror, in the private photos they take of their own [character]/[essence]; videos of them dancing alone in their bedroom.
This young father sleeping, on some journey. Them together, a kid to grow older. Me, or you.
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The way an object feels in the hand. A tactile exploration that lives ineffably with a: meandering through memory. Layers and layers of histories connected loose and free-associated. The sun that day, the reeds, the sound of [your father’s] voice calling for you across the house, the windows open. It’s summertime; easy time.
Do you have an object, the feeling of which you can call to mind? Turning it over in your fingers.
Perhaps which you always liked the feeling of,
somehow it making sense.