Monday after Thanksgiving...

It was eleven years ago today that I last saw my dad. Sunday after Thanksgiving, back in 2000, I received the phone call that my dad was in the hospital. His illness, multiple sclerosis, had seemingly taken the last turn. They didn't expect him to leave the hospital, alive. My family informed me that if I wanted to see him, now was the time. So, on that Monday, my mom and I packed up the car and drove down to Georgia to see him in the hospital. And I can still remember all the details of the day...the music we listened to in the car on the way down, the way he looked when I saw him from the door of the hospital room, and the conversation we had. Now, I don't intend to get into all of this here, as I've written about in the past in my old zines and the like. The day after I visited, he seemed to show incredible improvement. He left the hospital. I planned to visit him for Christmas. It would be an exactly one week before I received the phone call that he had died, on December 2, 2000.

Honestly, I haven't a clue why or what I wanted to write about it in this post. I suppose I wanted to share this picture of him. I wanted to share the memory of him with you. I wanted to share the fact that on this Monday, I always spend some time thinking of him, remembering that day in the hospital-- all the forgiveness, acceptance, and picking of the pieces that it entailed. Or perhaps that every loss entails. I wanted to share that every year on this day, I listen to The Good Life's Album, "Novena On A Noctourne," because this was the album my mom and I listened to on repeat for the entire four hour drive down and four hour drive back. Maybe, I just wanted to take a cliched moment to remember what it feels like to lose people we love and care about. Like I said, I'm not really sure.

But I do know that I miss him tonight. I can't help but wonder what he might be like if he was still alive or what we might talk about if I had called him on his 53rd birthday back in early November. But because he loved music so, I'm just going to post this song and remember how I promised him I'd buy him a stereo for Christmas.

When I was home for Thanksgiving, the older of my two younger brothers said to me, "How do some people just not like music? How can they just say, 'No, I don't listen to music.'" I suppose the things I remember the most about my dad are his plaid shirts, his cowboys boots, his Wrangler jeans, his love of Miller Lite, and well, his intense love of music. I don't think there was a single moment we were together that we didn't listen to music.

So, here you go, a song to pass the time, a song to remember with...



"I can feel a winter coming we're frozen in our stares,
and we know there's a world outside
of these insults and injuries
maybe we're just too, afraid to be one.
The autumn sets a golden exit the winter is waxing
that cold sun will shed no more warmth into our living rooms,
where we dream our dreams, where we wait for sleep.
Maybe we'll wake up with golden wings,
and fly over a city screaming, take me take me!" -The Good Life