Missing Him for his Birthday

Tomorrow would have been my Dad’s 82^nd birthday.  A Tuesday; that would have meant no dialysis for him so we could have had lunch.  But I can’t have lunch with him and I am at a loss as to what to do with myself.  I am supposed to be here at work but really, I don’t know how productive I’m going to be knowing I could be taking him to lunch, calling him in the morning to wish him a happy birthday, fighting with him over who is paying the check for lunch.  If things had been different, tomorrow would be different. But it wasn’t different so tomorrow, I don’t know, tomorrow will just be another Tuesday and I will be expected to just do what I do on every other Tuesday.  I keep trying to tell myself that this is how it was supposed to go – his time was up.  But my brain, and my heart don’t care. I miss my Dad.  I miss the phone calls, the visits, the lunches and I wish I could have just one more – one more tomorrow, to celebrate him.  I still don’t totally understand what happened, as much as I know why it happened; the chances of survival after a surgery like that last one were slim but still.  He had survived so much, why not this one?  Why did this have to be the one that took him out?  Sucks.  It sucks that I have that memory to hold onto; the one of him lying there, unresponsive, on a ventilator that did not keep him alive and I did not get to say good-bye.  I didn’t even kiss him good-bye when I left that night because I figured I didn’t want to bother him, wake him, and I would see him the next day anyway. 

So today, I will do my best to not cry like I did yesterday when I was at his house cleaning up.  I don’t know how my sister did it; she put almost all of my mother’s clothes in bags so yesterday I took a bunch of my Dad’s stuff that was still around in bags and all I did was cry. I found the “Grandpa, Established 2012” t-shirt I had bought for him and I clutched it as if it was the last piece of bread after the apocalypse; I just cried.  He should still be here, wearing that shirt.  I shouldn’t be here, putting his things in bags for someone else to wear one day.  I know that donating everything is the right thing to do and he would want us to do that – but still.  Knowing that doesn’t make it easier.  All that it does is confirm that he’s gone. Walking around the house and seeing it slowly become empty just makes me sad. Although it was never my home, it was theirs and one day it will be empty and it will become someone else’s home and I don’t know where I’ll go after that day.  If I want to see his stuff, I go to the house. But once those keys are handed over, and all of the clothes are donated and the things we are keeping are in boxes, it will be over and I will just keep on with my life without either of them.  I know that this is how it’s supposed to be – the parents die before their children – but again, it doesn’t make it any easier.  I miss my Dad.  I just really miss him.