Just another day

At the end of last week I felt that I had a bit of a problem with motivation, and alluded that I knew what was costing me the desire to be my normal witty, frequently-updating self, and that it was going to have to be dealt with before long because I had no control over it.

 

So much for drama; I was feeling funky about the impending anniversary of my father’s death.  Today (6/8) marks two years since he died.  I’ve written about him here before, how my life has changed since he left, and how I feel that I have done a fine job adjusting to him no longer being around, so I won’t go into that again.  But I have to admit that I found it troubling that I felt so apathetic about things leading up to this day.

 

The sun did indeed rise today.  In fact, it’s probably been warmer here today than any day yet this year.  Summer has finally arrived.  There have been no black rain clouds hovering over me, real or imagined.  Today is like any other day, which is a good thing.  So why did I let myself be distracted?  This was not the only thing in my life affected.  I avoided things I normally enjoy, felt aggravation much more easily, and was generally a pain in the butt to myself.

 

Also, I’m not exactly a “mark the date’ kind of person anyway.  I have no problems remembering significant events on the day that they occurred; I just tend to not make that big of a deal about it.  I went through a June 8 without my father last year, so it’s not like I didn’t know what it would feel like.

 

Perhaps that is the answer to my question.  Strike the perhaps, I know that is the answer.  I know what it feels like now to go through anything without my father.  I know how it feels to celebrate Christmas or any other holiday, how it feels to have breakfast in a restaurant (which we normally did together once a week or so) and how it feels on the golf course.  If I may be frank, it sucks.  I hate that he isn’t here for any of that and a million other things, but what can I do except move on?  There aren’t a lot of options out there for people who wish to rise up and denounce the circle of life.

 

Whenever I find myself questioning the way things happen, I go back to the inevitable.  My mind has a default setting that reminds me constantly that everything is finite, that we are all, if I may borrow injury list lingo, “day to day.”  Nothing or no one lasts forever.  And the person who taught me most about that kind of thinking, instilled the realistic point of view that is so present in my everyday thoughts, is the same person that I still wait to find sitting in his creaky desk chair, watching an obscure program about the Boer War on the History Channel and eager to answer any question I might have.

 

And I still have quite a few, and I still struggle sometimes with the knowledge that the person that I went to for answers for so long can’t directly help me anymore.  Of course, if he knew I felt this way, he’d tell me I was wasting my time fretting about it when I could be out there finding the answers for myself.

 

He’d be right, of course, but it was so much easier the other way.  Knowing that affected me quite a bit the last week or so, but it’s time to move on again.  I’ve made a lot of changes in my life in the last two years and until recently thought that I did so in spite of the fact that my father died, but I think I have come to the point where I accept that his death changed me, changed who I am and forced me to look at the things I have done and compare them to what I always thought I’d accomplish.

 

So many questions and so many answers.  It never seems to end, just like the influence of a great (and a greatly missed) man.