Family dynamics

Did I mention that my Dad died on July 14?

Tomorrow will be two months since his battle against the evil C was lost.

There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about him. I am very afraid of the day that comes when the whole 24 hours expires without a thought of my Dad. I am afraid that it will signal the end of short-term memories and the beginning of the distant memories that are indistinct and faded.

Recent memories are not all pleasant. In August of last year, Dad had his ticket punched by the doctors at UVa. They gave him a much more immediate departure date, but Dad fooled them. He had a few things he wanted to do first. He wanted to celebrate his 50th anniversary with Mom. He wanted to turn 70. And he wanted to say a few things to the people who mattered to him.

In the face of this awful disease, my Dad was gracious, appreciative of nurses, doctors and staff. He was loving and tried hard to be with us.

It was his decision not to take a second round of chemo. The doctors told him that it might buy him some more time, but he would be sick. And he already knew what sick was. And he didn't want to spend the rest of his life like that. I think he was afraid that Scott and I would think that he was taking the easy way out. We never felt that way. It was not a decision we could make and it is not one that we can second guess.

I went home this weekend for an extended visit with Mom. I need to spend time with her, but I was a little afraid to go home. Since I do not live in the same town as my parents, sometimes I can almost imagine that Dad is in the basement at the house playing poker on the Internet with people from all over the world. Going home meant facing the empty basement. It meant sitting in Dad's chair at the kitchen table and watering the flowers that he and my husband planted on Mother's Day.

Mom has been going to the cemetery almost every day. I figured I would go with her at some point, so I decided to go by there by myself first. Break the ice. I went once at the beginning of August, but had not been back.

I stopped at the area where Mom and Dad and Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Emmett bought plots. It is in a newer section of an old cemetery in Covington. When I was a kid, we would put flags on the graves of soldiers to honor their service to the country. I do not feel uncomfortable in the old part of the cemetery, but the new part feels strange to me. And awful.

As I walked to the grave with the straw on the still raw area, I stopped and felt my body just shake with grief and sobs that were internal, hot like lava under the surface but threatening to break loose at any moment. A swarm of bugs zeroed in on my eyes and ears and as I swatted them, I leaned forward and saw a small marker at the grave. It wasn't there the last time. Looking closer, I could see a name that was distinctly not my Dad's. In fact, it was Rachel someone.

I straightened up and looked over the next row and I saw a grave that was not as recent as the one I was standing in front of. There was a vase of flowers on it that I recognized as something Mom put there to keep the grave from seeming barren until the footstone is installed.

Wiping tears away, I stood over my father's grave and the sobs turned into a broken laugh. My Dad was a trickster. He liked to pull jokes - nothing elaborate. I don't think he pulled  the old switcheroo, but it struck me as being something that might make him laugh. "Over here," I could imagine him saying. "You never were very good with directions. I should have left you a map."

I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. I will always miss him.