᭄᭡ one last drive to your empty home ᭄᭡
the road gets longer behind me
and you're still at the end of it
the road gets longer behind me
and you're still at the end of it
Home has no real place, but it would’ve been you. Somehow, you were the closest thing to it, and in a fractured sense of family you became a home base. Which is a baseball analogy — for you.
I think about how shattered that feeling’s become in your absence. We’re all fighting to climb into what’s left of you: the house that we’re selling, the cabin that we might not be able to keep, the cars we had to sell, the custom furniture at your estate sale, or the dozens of hyper-specific kitchen appliances on facebook marketplace. All of it slips through our fingers as temporary tangible remains. And I move heaven and earth in my schedule to carve a path back through the seven connecting states, all so I can see you again. Pieces of you, that my family holds until I take them. Pictures. Camera rolls. A sword. It’s not like they’ll ever replace you but it feels like digging into the grave you never got, begging for something untouched by decay. It’s only been a year, and every week I feel I’m losing you more. I struggle to remember your voice. My childhood. Anything, before the pain of absence, separation, and distance. Anything, to ease the lack I foolishly thought was always there until you were truly gone, finally and forever, until I follow you.
I wish I could quantify how much I miss you by the things I hold onto. But there isn’t enough of you left to define it, and there never will be. Holding your sword will never feel like home in the same way it did in your arms. But the closest thing I will ever get to a hug from you again is your jacket, hugging my body, keeping me warm. Maybe that’s why I keep putting it on, even when I’m afraid it’ll fall apart. Fragile, like this sense of belonging. Fraying, like everything else.
Sometimes grief is: you’re on vacation, and your friends bring you to a beach named after the holiday of the last day you saw your father.
There’s no logical reason that the name of the beach should make you cry when you remind your forgetful friend of its title. But it does. And you have every assurance that no one will notice you start to cry as they fixate on the beauty of the coast, and catch quiet moments with each other. So you turn away quickly, and walk the beach at a steady pace. No one will know that you write your father’s name and death date far off, in the sand, where the waters will wash it away from all memory, after the tides pull in closer. No one knows you would’ve stopped to make a portrait of his face from the stony shore, like the pebble art you’ve seen in old internet trends: as if you’re capable of a feat in a few minutes. You don’t get the chance as your friends determine the length of the stay, and call you back to the car to continue the trek on the road.
You mention nothing as the ache in your chest lingers, and your salty tears have already dried on your chapped cheeks from the brisk winds brought in from the north. Sometimes grief is something you hold quietly, because it’s become more comfortable to. And you let the hours pass by, while the ache lingers still.
