‘What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men …… That is what love looks like.’ - St. Augustine

Sunday, July 03, 2005

Grief

I am writing this stream-of-consciousness. It is two weeks since my dad died. I'm just trying to work out my grief. Please be understanding.

In the realm of dreams I am dreaming of you, a place, a kind of vain exercise, if you ask me.

I am dying inside, I know it and there is nothing really I can do except sit and wait. The weight of these sad times we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. There is a silence so pure it thrills the life right out of my bones, but I do not know where to find it. There is a peck peck pecking going on at the door of my soul. Who to let in? Who to push out?

My father died last night. Well, actually days, weeks ago, but it feels perpetually like last night. I wonder where he is and what he is doing and it feels so wrong and so final that he is gone. I wonder if he watches me here typing away. I wish to be like him, but I am not in the ways I would wish. What happened to my writing passion, what happened to my burning desire to speak to this world? It is like I am dumb and blind; it is like I don't care, and part of me doesn't. I want to scream and tear myself into two parts and be eaten by birds, and have them fly up to heaven to see my father. How the hell does God expect us to accept death? Mine, I'm fine with…but my father? How could you? 'How could you, God?' That's what I really want to say everyday for the past two weeks….how could you?

I wish I were half as alive as my dad was on his worst days. He was always exploding with life, a light permanently on, and here I struggle to even wake up mornings. Why is that? What is my legacy? What heritage? I am leaden inside, and grieving pools of black liquid flow behind me as I walk.