An Ever Changing Reality...

I don’t really love that all that much.  Or so I think.  I want things to be a certain way, always.  But I know if they were, I would get bored and things would be stale and I would go fuck some shit up just to create something other than all that sameness...

Life is this ever changing reality but we attempt, sadly, to make it concrete.  The love we find will never die, change or leave.  The career we have will just be on a steady incline towards the top.  Our children will grow up and out but remain committed and true to us and our family.  Our friends will show up for us and will never be too caught up in their own lives to forget about ours.

We demand for a certain level of certainty.  We insist that things remain, and largely, the same.  Which is why we tend to describe sudden shifts in reality to feel like the rug is being pulled out from under us.  We feel duped.  Like we were promised something and now are being denied it.  But in truth, we are never really promised much of anything.  We are born, we live and we die.  A lot of shit happens along the way.  Some of us barely live and are taken far too soon.  Some of us live with excruciating trauma and pain.  Some of us are just lost on what to do with life and all its lifeyness, so we numb out and check out as a means to control all the overwhelming feelings we have about what life brings or doesn’t bring us.

This process of my dad dying has made me feel unmoored also.  All the schedules and routines have been disrupted and my ability to attend to much of anything is severely compromised.  I feel like I am walking in some sort of dream state...I am here, feeling and witnessing it all, but at the same time it has this very “non-reality” feeling to it.  My mom described it yesterday as feeling like she was floating above her life.  And that kind of does describe it.

I guess what is absent for me is that I do not feel like this should be different.  For some reason, I have been granted this pass on feeling like my reality should continue as it was.  I am in acceptance about where we are and what is going on.  I do not wish it to be different.  I believe my dad is still here because he needs to be, for reasons I will likely never understand.  I keep thinking, “is there anyone that he needs to talk to or that I should call for him?  Who might he need to say good bye to?”  And I called all those people yesterday.  And yet, he remains.  He is comfortable.  He is not in pain.  And is receiving excellent care.  It isn’t happening on my timeline, because I don’t have one.  I have no idea how this should go...I have never lost my dad before...what the fuck do I know?

Life is an ever changing reality.  And I am not sure why we tend to insist it be solid and unchanging.  We love the change when it is positive.  We dread and malign it when misfortune lays its gnarled hand upon us.  It is the same really, this whole fortune/misfortune thing, it is fickle as fuck and that is just the way it is.

We all take our turn in the barrel.  We do not get to choose when we lose someone we love and when we are granted more time.  I have thought this whole time that I will lose him tomorrow on Christmas Day.  My mom has even said she hopes that doesn’t happen.  And I get it, I have thought it too.  But I have landed where I usually do when presented with such things:  Someone’s dad or loved one has to die on Christmas.  And it might as well be us.  It isn’t a huge holiday for me or my family.  It will not ruin the day for us forever.  For sure it will add a layer of pain and sorrow and loss. But my mom already feels that way about Christmas for reasons unrelated to what is happening now.  And I once loved Christmas, but after my divorce and spending a lot of Christmas’ alone and single, it has kinda lost its sparkle and now feels more like obligation and a lot of fucking work. I would much rather be traveling somewhere and spend the money that way.  I don’t need the tree and all the decorations anymore.  I would rather spend time in some new place with people I care about than to make my house look like Martha Stewart lived here.

So it might as well be us to lose him tomorrow.  And in so doing, I pray that some other family is spared this.  Let it be us so that someone else doesn’t have to forever associate Christmas with the death of their loved one.  I know the universe doesn’t have a death quota per day...but I guess I am asking the powers that be to let it be us so someone else can be spared...we will be ok. Our holiday will not be forever ruined.  It will be changed for sure. But we will survive and it will be ok.

We live an ever changing reality daily but delude ourselves into thinking that things are solid and fixed.  Things can and do change on a dime.  Loves we thought would go the distance, fail and falter.  People we have had with us all our lives, die and move away.  Life is predictably unpredictable.  An intimate encounter where there are no real limits or boundaries, which is why, most likely, we create them in our minds.

Today, I am going to do my best to just live within this ever changing reality.  I know he is going to leave us, and I do not get to know when that will happen.  And while I have moments where that reality lands quite brutally within me, I also have moments sublime where I just am here, living, witnessing and doing my best to make sure this journey of his is as peaceful and as painless as possible.

I do not know what life will be like without him.  I do not know.  Because I can’t just yet.  This too is yet another reality shift I will come to know better in the weeks and months to follow.  And I will endeavor to do my best with it. To feel all the feelings and to learn all the lessons that losing your dad can teach you.  For now, I am mired in his leaving process.  And it is hard and painful and also beautiful at the same time.  It is interesting to see who you are when life slows everything down with an event like this and forces you to literally sit there and do absolutely nothing but witness, and cry, and be present.

I have never done this before but I know I shall be required to do this more and more until it is my turn to leave...and this is the ever changing reality of life: we are born, we live and we die.  And none of us are promised a good and painless existence.  We are the ones who have to work to do our best.  To live the life we are given to the best of our abilities.  Day after mother fucking day.  We get to do this, to walk each other home even when it feels like it will break us into tiny pieces we could not possibly ever gather back together.  We find that living affords us many opportunities to begin again...still.