August 2

Tomorrow is August 2. My dad's birthday. I was going to go see him. But I won't. Because he died 2 weeks ago, on July 16.

He was alive and then he was dead. Oh, his health was fragile. He had multiple problems. He had a heart attack 15 years ago and a stroke 5 years ago. He had COPD. And, of course, he was missing a few body parts, like his lower left arm and the thumb off his right hand. He didn't have the strength to walk, but he got all around the nursing home in his wheel chair. He had trouble finding the right words to say, compliments of the stroke, but he was mentally competent, alert, and interactive.

According to my sister Teresa who saw him about an hour before he died, he was pretty much the same as he had always been. An hour later his heart just quit working and he left us.

It is harder for me to grasp the reality, even though I went up to the nursing home to see him after he had died, I saw him at the funeral home, I sat through his funeral, and I went to the cemetery. But I didn't see him every day when he was alive like Mother, Barbie, and TC did, so going a couple of weeks without visiting him is no different for me. But it is different, because I know he isn't there. And I should be up there with him tonight and tomorrow for his birthday. But I'm not. Because he died. My daddy is gone. Boy is there really a hole in my life now.

And I cannot seem to cry. It has been over 2 weeks and I have not broken down and cried. Most of the time I have that "tears behind the eyeballs" feeling, but it is like a sneeze coming on and then fading away. The tears never really come. I finally did some armchair psychology on myself and decided that my subconscious knows that crying is admitting the reality. So I don't cry. If I don't cry, he isn't really dead. Only he is. He really is.