Seven years...

I've spent most of the day wondering if I should post something about it being seven years since my Dad died. My posts have been so miserable lately and I really didn't want it to be a maudlin entry. But it's getting late and although I went to visit his grave this morning - something I always feel a little ambivalent about as although I don't really believe he's there (I actually believe he's been re-born as my daughter as the resemblance around the eyes is spooky to me sometimes - maybe that's what reincarnation actually is - genetics), I do believe there is a part of him there although I don't really want to think too closely about that without getting morbid AND gruesome - I did feel as though I should mark the day somehow and not only by creating the world's longest sentence in history.

My Dad was a terrific guy.

[J. - are you crying yet?]

He was about as stubborn as a human being can be without being an actual mule and boy, did he love to argue. But he also loved to laugh - you never heard my Dad laugh as much as felt him - he would convulse silently, in place, progressively turning more and more red in the face until he finally exploded. Seeing him laugh made me laugh all the harder myself.

I think the thing about him being gone that I find the hardest to deal with is that he is really gone. I don't dream about him that often but just about a month ago, I dreamt that he was still alive and he was explaining to me that he wasn't dead after all but had been on a deserted island in the Pacific as part of a reality TV show that he had entered. The problem was that the only person who knew where he was, my friend Virginia (who has been dead for 11 years this April) had died - and so he was stuck on this island but had made the best of it by becoming an expert in the island's eco-system and was now actually very famous and rich because of it.

Weird and crazy dream-shit. Sometimes I really wonder about my own capacity for dream-fantasy - no wonder I wake up exhausted most mornings.

The best thing about the dream was that I got to hug him and I smelled him again. Dad always smelled salty and humid but not in a yucky way - he was like an ocean with skin.

God I miss him.

I miss him being a grandfather to my kids. My Dad was grooming himself his entire life to be a Nonno and only got to be one to my nephew for a little over 4 years. It sucks and it's unfair and it sucks.

Don't post comments about this to me, please. I just needed a vehicle to get this out but I don't really want to hear anything about it.

Thanks.