I'm not very good company the day we clean out Daddy's shed.  Mostly junk.  Really that's all it was. Just junk.  It was rusted and broken and shredded and wasted from neglected time but I can't laugh and make small talk while I throw out what was his.

We move through the dust and webs and sort into piles and the scene plays out before me like a movie when someone dies and their stuff is here but they are not.

But I don't think I was really there.  I was in a hospital room saying good-bye.  I was at the doctor's office that very morning listening to her tell me my mama really needs to be hospitalized.  I was in the back yard thirty-five years ago watching the pecan tree be planted or a light filled sunny day walking in his steps or catching crickets behind his mower.

I was anywhere but there.

And I just couldn't make small talk that day or really talk at all.  Tears sitting on the verge.

I've been difficult to get along with lately.

I have people.

And I want them to love me through this difficult time and forgive me and cry with me and make me laugh and just stick by me.

Really - just stick by me.

when i can't seem to stop waiting on daddy

I feel like I'm waiting on my Daddy.

It's four in the morning and I'm staring out the window at a storm.  Lightning flashes and I can hear the thunder.  I wonder if my mama is up, or if one of my sisters is awake and lost in her own thoughts of Daddy?

I am not seasoned at death.  I have lost grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and acquaintances.  But most seem natural and in order.  So, here I am.  Grown.  Mature?  Forty-eight years old, not seasoned but not stupid, either.  So why do I feel like my daddy is just running late?

Why do I feel like I'm watching out the window for his car to turn in the circle?  Mama has napkin over the fresh okra and the cornbread is turned over in the pan and in a moment Walter Cronkite will be telling America the way it is and Daddy's just running late.  These were the days before cell phones and if you looked closely you could and still can see the eyes of those you pass on the much too narrow Hwy 80 Pearl River bridge that was his path twice a day.

And that's what I feel like.  That he's late.  He can't call and did he drive the bridge at just the wrong moment?  Where's his car with the hidden pack of smokes? 

Why doesn't he just come on home?

Some experts say there are five stages of grief.  Some will tell you it's not necessary to go through them all and there is not a definite order to them, but that all of us, at some time in our life, will encounter and must face and deal with grief. 

And loss.

Am I in- and failing- the acceptance stage?

All she had to do tonight was be thoughtful and ask me how my mom was doing and I crumbled with reminders of Father's Day all around me. I hide in the office and cry while all celebrate outside the door and I know in my tears that Daddy's not running late.  He didn't get stopped going out that glass door at work or caught in traffic.  There's no accident on the bridge.  He's not hiding somewhere angry at me because last year I didn't send him a card on Father's Day.

Because last year I didn't pause to think that it might be my last Father's Day with him. 

I'm not in denial.  I'm not angry.  I'm not struggling with my own mortality or bargaining with God to bring Daddy back. 

I am trudging through acceptance and missing terribly.  Everyday.

And just feeling like I'm waiting on Daddy to get home.  Feeling six, or ten, or twelve.  Or forty-eight without a Daddy. 

I'm just waiting. 

when i don't need a picture to remember the best of all

Do only people a little off take pictures at funerals?

 

He's too good to me gave me a you're strange look when I told him to take pictures at my daddy's funeral.

 

But I wanted them.  I want to remember.

This is my daddy. And here.

 

I want to remember that no one does funeral sprays on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so flowers are small on the casket.  Just the way Daddy would have liked them. 

 

 

 

I want to remember and smile at the mismatched group of pallbearers that carried my daddy.  Young grandsons just beginning to shave and boys that look like they are from the mountains because they are.  Borrowed coats and jackets and my daddy would have liked that.  He never saw much need in clothes. 

 

 

 

That I forgot Max was an honorary pallbearer and didn't dress him right and he took off running to catch up in his khakis and furry hood.

 

That it was Mr. Charles that honored my daddy with the words simple, honorable, godly.

 

 

 

Remember how my uncle held tight to my mama.  Holding her up while knowing in two days he'd bury his daughter - right there in that red dirt next to daddy.  How did he hold up?  He'd just said goodbye the morning before. 

 

 

 

I want to remember that it was so cold my hands were going numb.  Gloves were in my pocket but I forgot to use them.

 

I want to look back and see how we all look just alike.  Daddy's look-alike younger brother and aunts I could belong to and the cousin that could have been the fifth one of us girls.  Remember how one red-headed new son carried my daddy tenderly and the other delivered the flag and words of respect to my mama's waiting hands.

 

 

 

I will need to rehear the shofar blow from little Gideon's hands and see that his heart was broken as he cried on his daddy.  That my girls were surrounded by love while we sang Victory in Jesus.  Remember how my daddy liked to hear David play.

 

 

 

 

I need to remember that we got lost on the way to the cemetery that holds the bodies of my daddy's parents.  That I took a rose from daddy's flowers and laid it at Ma's grave.  I will need to laugh when I remember Aunt Sue told me to

 

tell Mama to go fishing with Pee while she waits on the rest of us.  The rest of us ain't coming anytime soon.

 

And I told her.

 

 

 

But no one will ever need to remind me that what we laid to rest that cold day after Christmas Day was just a tired body that had stopped breathing. 

 

That it was just a way to honor Daddy and remember that he was the oldest and wisest of us all.  A way to publically say good-bye for now to a husband, father, brother, grandfather, uncle, and friend. 

 

My daddy wasn't watching us from heaven.  Not flying or sitting on a cloud or even fishing a heavenly pond. 

 

My daddy is falling down at the feet of Jesus.  Not still in awe but forever in awe.

 

And I will see him again. 

when you don't know how to bury the man that gave you life

I look around my house and it is a mess.  The wedding boxes are all out and at their correct locations but the very small Christmas we had is scattered.  Laundry is spilling over.  The sink is full of dishes.  The counter is full of papers.  Trash and mess are on things under things and around things.

 

I don't care.

 

One of my first blog posts was an attempt at humor and what I would do if something tragic happened and my house was a mess.

 

And it has.

 

And I don't care.

 

My daddy's gone. 

 

The day before he died he told my sister he'd been dreading this day for so long.  Leaving Mama.  Dying hard.  He told her where the money was to buy the gun he wanted to give his grandsons.  He shook their hands and mumbled words full of love.

 

He high-fived our baby Beau. 

 

He told my girls to take care of their mama.  He told me Max was smart and not to let him waste it.

 

He listened with closed eyes as we told him we loved him.  We told him we adored him and were proud to be his daughters.  We told him he was the best daddy there ever was.

 

He waited on the daughter not there.  Her and her's.  His first-born trying to wrap up things that needed to be done while she hoped and prayed she'd see her daddy again.  He listened to her words over the phone and held on until Mama told him not to any longer.

 

My mama lay by my Daddy's side and whispered words we could not hear.  Sweet nothins' he'd probably call them.  Love words.  Good-bye words. But only for a little while words.

 

The strawberry shake he wanted sat melting until my sister picked it up, drank, and passed it around.  We all shared that shake as we sat by his side and touched whatever part of his body we could reach.

 

When I got in trouble at school about the Indian chief named Bowels he laughed. He had snakes in his belly button and warned me not to swallow watermelon seeds and pushed the mower up the hills I couldn't. 

 

When I cried about the orange house paint that wasn't and never would be he told me people don't always say what they mean and never mean everything they say.

 

I can't go to bed.  If I do I'll have to get up and go bury the man who gave life to me when he held my mama and loved her the way a man was made to love a woman. 

 

I just care about figuring out how to bury my daddy tomorrow.  How to hold up my mama when all I want to do is fall.  How to get my bluebird through her wedding day without her Pete-pa.

 

How to understand God's timing.  How to thank God enough for allowing my Daddy to go easily and quickly.  How to understand not understanding it all.

 

I thought I'd care if my house was a mess and people stopped by.

 

But I don't.

 

I really don't.