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Current mood:Reflective
Category: Life
A wonderful lady, talented poet, someone who is always around to offer wisdom and encouragement, is feeling very empty today. My dear friend, Saroya Poirier, lost her step dad last night. My heart goes out to her.
I can tell by reading her words that her loss cuts deeply. That she is feeling somehow orphaned. I can so identify with those feelings. My father passed away almost thirteen years ago, and I still mourn him.
It always amazes me how people can affect our lives. Some of those lives we are simply born into, while others are thrust upon us, and still others we simply find our way to somehow.
I think of my father daily. And those thoughts can conjure a smile or outright laughter. A great many times, tears too. He was my rock. The person with whom I connected most deeply in this world. Without him, I have most definitely floundered.
He knew everything about me. A very liberal-minded, open, and honest man, he listened to everything I said. Never judged, but always played devil's advocate for me. lol He gave it to me straight. No doubt. And that man could keep a secret. He died with some of mine.
He spent the last three years of his life struggling with illness. I took care of him. He lived with me. Yesterday, I ran across an interview that a review site did with me a few months ago. The final question in the interview was: "If there was a day you could live over and change, what would it be?"
I had answered: The day my father died. That I would have spent more time with him instead of being so busy that day.
I glossed over all that and went about my business yesterday. I didn't have time for tears--for reflection--didn't want to feel sad. But today?
Now that I think about it, I realize I had it wrong. I spent that day exactly as I should have. That afternoon I busied myself planting spring flowers all around my front porch and in the planters. No small chore--it's a big porch. lol He sat on the porch and watched me, talking a mile a minute just as he always did. Daddy was a talker.
There are things he said that day, which I won't share, that I understood later meant he knew it was his last day. That he was leaving me. He tried desperately to impart all his wisdom, all his thoughts in those last few hours.
His ashes rest in a mahogany chest that sits on a shelf atop my computer desk. He's always there. I never again planted flowers. I've always felt guilty that I wasn't sitting on the porch with him listening intently to his every word, watching him.
I was wrong.
He wanted me to plant those flowers. To go on. To have a life filled with flowers. I'm afraid I have disappointed him. It's getting cold here in Carolina. The right time for pansy-planting. I'm going to buy some today.
It's time I got off my ass and planted some flowers.
(Oh, and the song I'm listening to? It was my dad's favorite.)
2:39 PM
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