Thursday, September 13, 2012

Save it for Later

That's the title of the song playing on my ipod as I write this (I've got my 80s "Nowhere Girl" playlist on right now).
I was thinking of a comment I wrote on my friend (blog-friend whom I have yet to meet but whom I am certain is a slam-dunk kind of person in the best possible way) Julia's blog. About the relationships we have with people who are no longer with us.
How they transmute.

My friend A. first distilled this idea for me (before my father died).

And it's very true really. I often think of something I need to tell my father, something funny or something political, or something that is both, or something scarily political (which is, in my humble opinion, backed by alarming stuff I've been reading through on the twitter-verse, very worrisome). 
And then I do tell him. The stuff about a Mormon running for President of the United States (he would lose his mind. After trying to be rational about it).  About the Mitt Romney-Ashley Madison billboard I also glimpsed on Twitter (he would have loved that). It would be right about now that my father, if he was still here, would be sitting me down for a serious talk about this neighbour country of ours, south of the border, and whether or not I really want to live there, even if it is to be with the love of my life (I do. I will. I already said it in January and I affirm again, a thousand times over).
How would I respond to that question? I'm guessing I would be my father's daughter, something that I wasn't always during his woefully cut-short life.
"Dad", I would say. "How can I possibly infiltrate the real state of American politics unless I live there? I mean really! I will have a much better chance of understanding it all, including this bullsh*t moral climate they're rustling up, if I'm acutally there."
This may or may not have worked to convince him. I guess, in part, this conversation is also to help me. Because I do observe the machinations of this impending (not upcoming. That implies positives. Impending, to me, signals doom) election. It worries me, as I mentioned yesterday.
Alot.

I don't have all the answers for all of those burning questions.
I have my own answer as to how your relationship with a person changes after death.
You still look for them everywhere, as if, in some part of your mind and heart, they are not dead (and in those parts, they really aren't).  You still yearn to tell them things, even if they are mindless things, things about the state of Roadwork in the City of Toronto (clue: Hell on Earth).
You dream about them. They visit in dreams when they are most needed, sometimes you don't even realize the need it's so visceral.  You project a present and a future with them in it. Somewhere, in my mind's eye, though no such item exists, there is a photo of me in my wedding dress with my father standing proudly beside me.

My friend Julia were having a discussion about how there is no way to actually know how you will feel about someone in your life leaving it for good until it actually happens. This is a fact.
But there are clues. I guess all I'm saying here (I'm wading in, I'm doing the practice, thanks for bearing with me) is that you shouldn't save it for later.
Say what you have to say, do what you have to do.
When you can.
Okay, now.

No comments:

Post a Comment