blog

INGREDIENTS

Any [immovable/rigid/dogmatic] idea of how or what anything must be

lack of curiosity

excessive navel-gazing

vitamin deficiency

DIRECTIONS

...

finish later

it's hard to lose a parent under any circumstances. they bring you to life, teach you what they can, and one day you see them for the last time. my dad died young, without warning. things were complicated but not in any particularly unique ways. i didn't feel close to him.

he loved me and i love him but he was unreliable, he drank and crashed his cars, he hurt my mom, he hurt his girlfriend after my mom, never came to a track meet, skipped his custody days, lied, stole. he taught me how to hold a grudge, how to draw, how to pirate music. he never taught me how to make chili but i figured out how to do it like him anyway. i was his first born. we share initials: AJC.

once i left home i did everything i could to stay away, and the space between us only grew. i never called, but neither did he. i ignored texts until i had a question. we both grew up. he really did try, but for a long time i was bitter. dismissive. thought it was too little too late, hated the pieces of him i saw in myself. and there are plenty, built into my psyche the same way everything that happens to a person makes up who and how they are. i have fuzzy shiny memories of him as my Favorite Man, memories of hiding behind the couch to see the movies he'd put on after my bedtime. he pretended not to see me behind him, peeking out from under a blanket on the floor. nasty fucking carpet in that house. i can still smell it. i remember how he took pictures of everything, how he loved cats, how our dining room would fill with smoke when he played poker with his friends. i remember scrubbing musty yellow smoke stains off the walls when my mom sold the house.

we were born when the sun and moon sat in capricorn. i got his eyes, his hair, his teeth, his love for rollercoasters, a lot of his restlessness. my mom hated it when he gave himself tattoos and i loved learning to do the same. i never got to tell him that. he didn't know me anymore, and i never met the person he became. the one he was still becoming. my sister says he was really in love, keeping a job, happier than ever. i never got to ask him how he did it. i never told him he was a good dad, and it would have been a lie if i did. he was a friend, an addict, the only person brave enough to try to teach me how to drive. he cared about romance and art almost exclusively. he knew the exact locations and conditions to gather too many morel mushrooms for anyone to eat alone. he probably regretted having 3 kids by age 22, but he would never have said that. he misspelled my name every time he wrote it. he cried in front of me more than any man i've known since.

on the first of december he died of a heart attack at home. i'll never hold a grudge again.

"TO LOVE SOMEONE UNCONDITIONALLY IS TO NOT CARE WHO THEY ARE OR WHAT THEY DO. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, ON THE SURFACE, LOOKS THE SAME AS INDIFFERENCE." (r. bach)

WITHOUT EXPECTATION OR ATTACHMENT

a wish for another person's happiness

ABSOLUTE FREEDOM / ABSOLUTE DEVOTION

incurable