Five and a half Months

 Something I started a week ago...

Well Dad,

It's finally hit me. You're gone. Gone forever. You've bought the farm, cashed in your chips. You're doing the long limbo, making a call from the horizontal phonebooth, in the marble mailbox, taking the final curtain, in the pine penalty box, dancing the hokey crokey, flying the marble kite, tipping a dirt maitre'd, pushing up Miss Daisy, shopping at the mahogany mini-mall, riding the soil sidecar, staying at Club Mud, passing the Grave Poupon, doing the worm wave at stiff stadium, driving the wood Buick, eating moss muffins, in that dull playground in heaven. 

Almost all that comes from a Johnny Carson skit for the funeral of the editor of Roget's Thesaurus. It was a few weeks before Johnny went off the air. I must have been ten. You and mom allowed me to stay up late sometimes. Why? Was it to view Johnny Carson? Could I already not sleep at normal hours? Was it another day of my childhood when I could not concentrate well enough to do homework and was up until 11:30 trying to complete what took other kids ten minutes? 

One day we had a fight, then we sat in your house's den for an hour, three feet from each other, and didn't say a word. I was mad enough that I was waiting until the next morning to sufficiently cool down and apologize. By ten o'clock the next morning, you were gone. it took me months to get over the idea I killed you, and it still occasionally comes back. 

I was in a relationship when you died, a good one, and we were very much in love. It's very difficult to think properly about one change when another one was going so well. We've gone no contact for a month to help get over each other (mostly me), and suddenly my life is back to what it was. Everything is as it was before R----, and every minute of the day I see your face and note what's missing. However much we fought, I miss you overwhelmingly. The giant who was part of my life past 99% of parents is gone, and now I find out what life is without you.