it's been a little over a month since my pop passed away. i went home this weekend to see my mom and my niece, and on my way out of town i stopped to see dad as well. you'd think some grass would have grown on his grave by now, but it hasn't. not wet enough, i suppose. there were some other people in the cemetery, which annoyed me, but it was nice to sit with him for a while. he was never much for flowers (he had allergies and swore up and down we were trying to kill him whenever we brought any home!) so i brought him a smoke and some whiskey. technically, this is a traditional indian thing, plus, i think it would crack him up. he always favored old granddad whiskey, but i couldn't find a tiny bottle of that, so he got some good old jack. the headstone won't show up for a few more months, so for now there's an awful aluminum marker. i will say, though, that while his grave isn't on the slope of the hill (the most popular spot and with the best view), he's got a nice view. lots of farmland, a pretty big red barn, and you can see the town from where he is. i can understand better now why he wanted to be buried; being able to go and see him, such as it is, is a comfort. he always wanted coupeville to be our home, and now we'll always have a place there.

while nothing is ever going to be the same again, i think my family and i are settling in as best we can. pop was a bigger buffer between my sister and mother and i than i realized; every little bump along the way this past month has been harder to navigate. there were quite a few weeks when i couldn't even talk to them. not in an angry sort of way, but our nerves were definitely raw and we had a hard time expressing ourselves. on the one hand, all i want to do is talk about him with them, but it's so hard to bring it up, and i don't want to make anyone else cry or feel bad. i can also only take so much. it's still way too new, way too sharp a feeling. i can't believe everyone goes through this; that seems completely, crazily unfair. it's simply a matter of whether you have gone through it, or you will. honestly, that thought blows me away. that we can go on after this, that in a sense it's a normal part of life, is amazing to me. it doesn't make me miss him any less, but it does comfort me in a odd way.

i know i say it all the time, but i do really miss him. he wasn't always easy to get along with, either. i want you to know that i'm not idealizing him or my relationship with him, but for all his jerky qualities, i still miss him. i'd take all the lousy stuff about our relationship if it meant i got to have him back. i just wish i'd had longer with him.

okay, enough of this for today. i spent all weekend thinking about and dealing with this stuff. today i'm going to do laundry, run some errands, make the house tidy and wait for my little family to come home. i love having one day to myself, but i love it when they come home from school and tell me about their days, and we sit and talk and listen to the radio. i also need to dye my hair all one color; right now it's kind of a hot mess and i'm going to chicago in less than 2 weeks time! i want to be foxy for that trip, and i'm pretty sure foxy doesn't have streaky, ridiculous hair.