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Being single aint easy....maybe it's just me.

An empty conversation

leading to assumed conclusions

steals the air from the room, 

and I graciously

fall back down the ladder

from which I have made no progress.

Maybe there are no ghosts in this room...

..maybe there was no life to begin with.

Maybe it's time to move the ladder...

or maybe just put it away.

It was a pretty surreal thing, receiving the cremated remains of my Father within a Flat Rate Shipping Box from my postal worker this afternoon. Everything He was, just a month ago, now fits within a small black box delivered by registered mail.

One day, I'm going to be in a box like that. I always liked to think that I was going to live forever, I tell my son this all the time.

"I am Immortal." I tell him at every question of my passage through time. He thinks it's funny. He loves to call me Old Man. (Well, he used to, until I started nut tapping him every time he did so. It's all in fun...I don't get him 'good', I really just hold it over his head for awhile)

The death of a parent, even one that may not have been so close, has a way of making you stare your own mortality directly in the face, it has a way of humbling and grounding you. At least it has me. My father and I weren't very close. I really barely knew him outside of my limited experiences with him as a child and then here and there as an adult. He really did his own thing. I know he was proud of me, because he told me so. But I really wish he would have been there and played a larger role in my upbringing. In all honesty, I spent more time with my aunts and uncles and my grandparents than I did him. Now, I'm not writing this to dog him and step on his name, I'm saying this because that's just the way it is and was. It is what it is.

There has been some disagreement with the choice to not pay for an obituary, which costs $200 for a Sunday edition, which is unfortunate. I just didn't see the point. I'm sorry, but I no longer see the relevance of an obituary, and in all honesty, shit man, times are tough..$200 is alot of money these days, and I don't think that an obituary is any way of "honoring" a family member. In a paper that will be tossed away and forgotten? These things should be passed by word of mouth, from family member to family member and from friend to friend in my opinion. Am I wrong in this thinking?

And as far as honoring his name and memory, I got his fucking name tattooed on my forearm....that aint going nowhere...thats there for life. And I honor his memory, in my mind, every time I take a shot from his camera, or every time I listen to his music collection, or stare with admiration at his photography. I honor him by being a better father than he was. I honor him by loving his grandson as best as I can. (It is because of him, That my relationship with my son is so strong.)

I honor him every day that I realize how alike him and I really were.

I just had to get that off my chest, This blog might get personal from time to time...but it's my blog. I apologize for nothing.