Category: Family

Home Again

We are back at home after the wake. It was a nice gathering. Lots of family and friends paying respect to my father.

I almost made it through the whole four hours without losing my shit, but just as we were getting ready to leave I had a moment.

I miss my dad.

The funeral is tomorrow morning.

Busy Day Ahead

My father’s wake is tonight. His funeral is tomorrow. It’s going to be a tough couple of days, but we’ll get through it. My step daughter is home. My step son expects to be home later tonight. My wife has been my rock. I love my family. If I hadn’t made it clear 10000 times before, I love my family and I am honored that they have accepted me into their lives the way they have. I couldn’t be happier.

I don’t know what I want to do with my time before the wake starts this afternoon. I think I am going to see about getting a hair cut. I have to iron a couple of shirts even though we don’t have an ironing board anymore. I already played some guitar this morning. I recorded leads for three songs and now I don’t have any songs that are ready for guitars. Gotta get on that and add some new ideas.

I’m sure I’ll add some nervous posts between now and the end of the wake. For now though, enjoy today’s photo a day pic. 5/365 (and also a bonus pic). Guitar, of course.

5/365
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More Playing Time

I was able to sneak in my full day’s worth of exercise after work tonight. It was borderline miraculous and my legs are killing me.

I also snuck in more guitar. I put rhythm tracks onto one song and leads onto two.

Bonus. Now I am going to hang out and wait for my step daughter to come home. She’s on her way.

Bonus indeed!

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4/365

Oh yeah, and I also uploaded those photos I forgot to upload this morning before I left for work. That second one is 4/365 for the photo a day thing. Let’s just call it a complete day and pat ourselves on the back a little.

Which Me is Real?

My sister in law started a shared Google Photo Album where we can all add pictures of my father. One of my brother’s friends is going to make a slide show out of them that we will have running at the wake on Thursday.

I was looking through the album and I had a weird moment where my memory and reality sort of broke apart from each other. There was a picture of me from a couple of years before I had my weight loss surgery. I wasn’t even close to the 450 pounds I weighed when I finally decided to go under the knife, but I was probably 380 pounds or so. I was huge, though not quite as huge as I would eventually get.

Seeing that picture didn’t phase me in the least. I kept scrolling through the album and I eventually got to a photo from earlier this year. Father’s Day, to be precise. There was a picture of my father with my brother, my sister, and some other guy. I did a double take. The other guy was me. I didn’t recognize myself. It was the same me that I see in the morning now. It was post-surgery, 215-220 pound me. The current me. The new normal, real me. I didn’t recognize me.

I did recognize the dangerously overweight me as if it were the “real” me.

That didn’t bother me quite as much as being asked about my mother while talking about my father’s funeral did (as mentioned in a post from earlier today), but it disturbed me a bit.

Like… who am I? Who is the “real” me? Do I even know? Will I ever know?

Well, That was Painful

I did a little funeral planning today. My step daughter, Bellana, is going to sing a song at the service and I had to call the parish musical director to get a copy of the arrangement. I mentioned whose funeral it was and she got all sad. She knew my parents and extended her condolences. She said she hoped my mother was doing okay.

Well, in her defense, my parents stopped going to this church when they moved out of town about three years ago. The music director hadn’t seen or heard from them at all over that time. While my mother’s funeral a year and a half ago was in this very same church, I did not expect her to remember that.

Still… I’m already feeling pretty low over losing my father but then to have to share that my mother’s been gone for over a year. Yeah, that was a bit of a gut punch. Ouch, babie. Ouch.

Dad’s wake is the day after tomorrow. The funeral is the day after that.

Who Needs an Oven

Really, an air fryer, an induction thingie, and a toaster oven. Who needs the big kitchen oven?

Jen does. She’s roasting veggies in the oven and cooking quinoa on the stove while I cook chicken in the air fryer and instant mashed potatoes (heaven’s gift, indeed) on the induction thingie on the other side of the kitchen.

We are kind of a team in this house.

Planning

We went over some plans for the funeral service. We also wrote out an obituary. For the service it feels like there are more things to do than we have people to do them. It’s frustrating. As always, I want to make everyone happy and I just can’t.

There was some talk of my father’s will tonight. that weirded me out in a major way. I’m sure there will be more to come, but it’s something I never wanted to think about and now that it has begun, I want it even less.

Miss Robin tried to make me feel better. She’s fluffy and cute so that’s something she’s good at.

As for tomorrow? No idea. I want to spend time with my wife. I want to spend time with music. I want to go grocery shopping. I want to jump into the car with Jen and run away and not come back for days. So… the usual Saturday thinking.