Grief sucks.

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I will eventually put up our American Idol chart and talk about who got sent home, but not tonight.

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See, sometimes, I don't write because most of the things that pop in my head seem so frivolous to me, so meaningless in the grand scheme of things, that when I do sit down to write, I figure the thoughts aren't worth the space they take up.

And then, there's Dad... or rather, my thoughts of Dad. I sit with the cursor blinking at me, daring me to start typing. Meanwhile, thoughts rush in and out of my head so fast, I barely have time to let them register in there at all, let alone hammer them out on a keyboard for the world to see.

Grief sucks. Two steps forward, three back. Memories trigger other memories and thoughts pile up on each other into a huge pile of some master event unfolding in my mind. An event that ultimately ends up in the same place every time.

Everyone wants to help, wishes they could help in some way, some mystical way, and we wish they would help, or that they could help, but I don't know how, don't know what to tell them. I miss my Dad. My Mom misses him, more than anyone who has never lost a spouse could ever know. How do you take 38 years of knowing someone, all the good, all the bad, all the ugly, loving them in spite of (or despite of or because of) everything, and pick up the pieces when they are suddenly not there anymore? My answer is: You don't. Well, you don't pick up ALL the pieces anyway.

There is no time line for grieving. There is no 'rubric' or standard. We each have to do it in our own way, in our own time. I still have times that I cannot believe this is all real. It can't be, can it? And, I get ticked off sometimes because he and Mom were SO CLOSE to going to Scotland, seeing St. Andrews, renewing their vows...Dad talked about going to Disney World when he got back, and taking all of us. Why in the heck did this have to happen now? Now that he finally "got it?" And, there are times, I am so dang numb from it all that I don't remember how I got to work that morning. Times when I have to go to the men's room in order to have a 60-second total meltdown. And other times that I feel like everything is getting better.... I go through it all, sometimes over the course of a couple days, sometimes going through it all in the course of a morning, or an hour....

Grief sucks. It sucks minutes, hours, days out of lives. Sometimes, it feels like months have gone by, and other times, it's like it all happened yesterday. How many times have I felt like I have lost focus? A zillion. I know there are loved ones that are here, alive, wanting my attention, my love. People say it will get better... I know things get "better" in some respects. But, I also know that, for me and for those that love my Dad, anyway, it's perfectly okay to miss him, miss his laugh, his charm, his goofiness, his love, for the rest of our lives. That's part of loving someone, long after 'death do us part....'