My dad

What a strange and freakishly bewildering roller coaster ride this last month has been. Saturday morning I got a call from my sister. She didn't have to say anything. The fact that she was calling that early on a Saturday morning said it all. I didn't even need to see who was calling, I knew what they were going to say. By the time the phone had rang a second ring I had already picked up. "Hi Ster, this is Lori" she said with her voice that indicated to me that she was on the other end with a red face, furled brow, quivering chin and wiping a tear off of the corner of her eye. "We lost dad this morning." She continued. I knew this day was coming. Too many events had transpired recently that were too perfect to be chalked up to coincidence. Too many things had been said at seemingly random moments for this news to not be arriving to me on Saturday.

When I got off the phone with Lori I laid in bed for a while. I don't think clearly when I first wake up. Hell, I don't think clearly half the day. My mind is like a freight train. extremely slow and lethargic at first. Things are creaking, popping, whining, squealing and puffing. To the bystander it doesn't look like much is going on. My eyes are glazed over and there might be a dab of drool dipping off the edge of my bottom lip. But that is when there is the most exertion happening. My brain is working to get all of that mass into motion. By about noon things are picking up speed. a trotting horse can keep pace with me. By 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 P.M... Wow! We are making up for lost time! There is a steady buzz, things are clipping by like blurry wisps. I am chewing up track and barreling on to the next destination. That is why every night it takes all the concentration I have to bind it up into submission so that I can get some sleep.

Saturday morning I needed some mental clarity. Concise, agile and complicated thoughts needed to be processed. Nothing affords me those moments as well as physical labor. Mindless and solitary labor. Arduous enough to get blood pumping, but not so much that it might wear me out. I sat up, threw my legs over the side of the bed and put on my work clothes. The garage needed to be cleaned out and I had nearly a dozen little projects there that needed to be completed. By the end of the day, I had most of them completed. Do you ever experience that moment when you are driving down a road and you think "I know there is a STOP sign back there. I have no recollection of stopping... did I actually stop or did I just breeze through?" It was one of those days. I don't have very many specific memories of accomplishing many of my tasks but evidence shows I did.

Through out the day I replayed thousands of memories of my dad. Over and over again. Organizing them. Analyzing them. Wondering what effect that had on what I am today. I even put some thought into what I wanted to write here in this blog. Just as much as physical labor brings clarity to my thoughts. Writing them solidifies them, organizes them and assigns more meaning to them.

Tonight we had a family meeting. While I was there Mandy asked my brothers Kimball and Shawn if they had cried about the passing of their father. Shawn asked if I had, and I said "No" He looked a bit surprised by my answer. Come with me as we peel back the years and take a very intimate journey into my past and find out who my dad was to me. He was a very unique person and he had different meaning to each person. The other thing I have discovered from talking to my older siblings is that he was a different father to them than he was to me. I hear about their stunts and I have no doubt why.

Actually, at this current moment I am going to cut this blog short. I have a rickety old chair that I truly plucked from a garbage heap. It's exterior identifies it as an office chair. After sitting on it, you quickly realize its true purpose was as an interrogation chair. It can magically make you hurt and jab you in tender spots you never knew you had. It stabs, prods and rams you into a perfectly irritable state, such that I am absolutely convinced you would spill all of your most valuable information for a reprieve from the stabbing embrace of this wicked contraption. I have a new office chair in the garage waiting for me, but I have to wait for the formalities of Christmas and acting really surprised (however, gestures of excitement will be legitimate) when I open it up and put it to much yearned for use. Join me here tomorrow for the next edition to "My dad".