Anniversaries, time passing, and 4.5 years later

Wow…over two years(?!?) since my last live post here!

So many drafts and thoughts and partial posts and intended-to-posts and such.

Today–June 30–mere hours beyond the 4 1/2 year mark since Dad. On this side of that mark, now headed toward the ‘holiday cluster half’ of the year, and Dad’s birthday, and…the 5 year mark.

5 years…that’s half a decade.

That’s old enough for conscious memories that persist–asking Mom in the kitchen in Detroit “Will I ever be 5 again?”

That’s long enough for massive changes in life, situation, circumstance, and so on.

In the 1980s, that was the length of time the Legion of Super-Heroes jumped ahead.

And probably most significantly (to ME) in the usual over-thinking/inner-thinking/way MY mind goes…Five Years is the time the Companions of the Lance spent apart, travelling the world of Krynn, before reuniting at the Inn of the Last Home in Solace.

I first discovered Dragonlance in 1995, with this first novel–Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I was 14 at the time. Five years…was more than a THIRD of my ENTIRE LIFETIME at that point. I had NO frame of reference in my own actual, lived experience for having an established friend group, spreading out across the land for five years and then reuniting at the end of that time-span.

And now, here I sit in 2026, 45 1/2 years old, and headed at that slide onward to 5 years…since losing my Dad.

I’ve been volunteering with Griefshare for a couple years now, after attending for several sessions prior. Last night we talked about “secondary losses”–those losses associated with someone you lost, but beyond that actual person. Secondary losses may include the loss of a confidante, loss of the person that took the trash out, loss of one’s encourager, one’s example, and so on. Countless things. And they can be both immediate and future.

Specifically, it came to me last night that among other secondary losses, I lost the opportunity to get to see my parents retired and traveling. To get to see them revisit Branson, or various New York travels, or just WHERE EVER they would decide to go. To make memories.

And then ultimately, to get to come back and share them with me.

I’m facing stuff with an ex-employer that I can’t help but wonder at Dad’s thoughts on. I know how I feel, and at least some of MY internal motivations. I wonder if Dad would agree, and/or what he’d advise, and so on.

I know that this situation is looking unlike anything I’ve ever faced or taken on before in my life; and I have to wonder if I’d feel so strongly if Dad was still here, or how his continued presence would influence my course.

Finally–and it just popped back into my memory as I sit here typing this post–I’m re-hit at something Dad had said, I believe it was around this time in 2021 (5 years ago…) when he was talking about some of the realities of things going on, and musing, and whatnot.

“If I could live five more years…”

So here we are. After Dad fell in April 2017, that evening I got home from work and found him laying on the floor by the kitchen…that could have been it. Just over 4 1/2 years after that, we celebrated Dad’s 71st birthday, which he proclaimed to be his best one ever, spent with me and Mom, going out to eat, and just being together.

…two months later, he was gone.

Now again 4 1/2 years later…that’s stirred up some other thoughts/emotions/feelings that I certainly did not plan on unearthing when I started typing tonight.

Lotta thinking, nostalgia, randomness

I’m definitely in a weird place, so to speak.

I have no idea what my future holds. Honestly, I often don’t feel that I really HAVE much of one; and I’m also realizing that chances are, I have fewer years in front of me than ahead. Grandpa was 69, Dad was 71…if THAT trend continues, I have about 30 years left in me, tops.

There’s a lot in my past that I’d go back and change if I could. That being SAID…I’ve read enough books and comics, watched enough movies and tv, and so on to know that even IF time-travel were possible, it wouldn’t be able to change ME, myself, who I am right now this moment. It’d spin off some alternate universe/timeline, or I’d just cease to exist, etc. OR that time has already been changed, and who/what/how/etc I am NOW is the end result, leaving me no knowledge of the actual alternatives.

Granted, that’s also outside any theology and such, which I’m not getting into here/now.

But it’s something to fantasize about, no?

Changing things, remodeling one’s life based on what one knows and has “now.”

If I were to be able to, I’d want to be able to pick and choose elements from various points in life. If it were linear, by changing something in say, 2009, I’d lose everything and everyone SINCE. Go back and tinker with 2006 or 2004 or 201, and the changes would have larger ripples. But pick and choose? Be able to change some things, but still have other things turn out how they are in the present? THAT would be its own dream.

I’ve just today learned (or re-learned, if I’ve forgotten learning of it before) of a book “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August” by Claire North that I’m very interested in reading now. Apparently a comic writer whose work I’ve read has been compared to it, and THAT work had sparked some thoughts, so I’m interested in this novel now to see what it has and does story-wise. Essentially the idea of a person dying, and waking up as a child again, with events playing out as they had…but the person remembers that “past life” and can influence events this time around. Again…a fantasy story, fiction…but something to think about.

I’ve been listening through the audiobook of “Dragons of Winter Night” lately–a revisiting of a favorite book from my high school years. Actually–didn’t I just mention that in a recent post, on being Master of stuff?

So it’s still impacting me, revisiting these old familiar characters, and the memories being stirred up. The feelings. Stuff unique to an individual in the reading of a favored story (much the way we can grieve the same person/loss but each person’s grief is different).

Add to revisiting these characters/story that I’ve finally hung a couple of art prints I bought years ago with several of them featured that now hang above my workspace, and a couple of them featuring prominently in “Dragons of Fate” and I’ve had plenty of nostalgia seeping into thoughts and feelings.

Then I randomly recalled a snippet from a song–and tracked it down. Lee Greenwood’s rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” specifically the line “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat…” and a trumpet flare behind it. The imagery always put me in mind of Sturm Brightblade and the High Clerist’s Tower in Dragons of Winter Night. But adding that song’s audio stirred something up in the way that music does where voice-only does not.

It was easy enough tracking the specific track down…I looked for the album cover. When I came across it back then (1995 or so), it was a CD that Dad had; so along with Dragonlance nostalgia and such, there’s also been a sense of Dad about.

Further memories stirred up…a trip to New York City freshman year of high school. A busride, a friend, taking some photos, being a long way from home with schoolmates. A hotel pool area and parking myself somewhere to read, cranking my weak headphones up to drown out everything else.

Coming out of Monday’s Griefshare session, I’d been reminded of and was thinking about that one time a few years back when Dad’s friend Eric was visiting; being at a restaurant and just kinda observing/listening to them talk and reshare old stories and whatnot. For the life of me, I can’t remember what the specific story was…but I remember seeing them both break down in laughter; and for me, with Dad especially, it just stuck with me. I’d seen/heard him laugh before, but there was just something to that particular moment; the simple, sheer enjoyment apparent with them, the memory, that the experience they’d talked of still had that sort of effect so many years later.

I’ve myself never been a terribly expressive person, in-person. Orrrrrr…I don’t feel I’ve been. But sometimes people have said they could tell something looking at me, so…I dunno. Suffice it to say, I won’t be put on any gameshows: win, and I could be ecstatic inside but I’m reserved enough around strangers that I’d just sort of “be.” So there’s something to be said about seeing others express feelings more outwardly.

Annnnnnd there we go…my thoughts are jumbling. Time to wrap it up for tonight.

Dragons of Winter Night Audible audiobook; Dragons of Fate (2023), Sturm Brightblade vs. blue dragon Skie; Lee Greenwood album.

We are not masters of grief

We are not masters of grief.

We may wish to be. We may try to be. We may do everything we can, go every which way, in an attempt TO master it.

But we aren’t.

That’s my rephrasing/phrasing of what I heard (just one thing of many) at the grief group tonight.

But it also sparked another thought/memory/SOMEthing for me: Raistlin Majere.

Raistlin is a fictional character, from the DRAGONLANCE books. Between this year’s new Dragons of Fate, and revisiting Dragons of Winter Night at present (I’m a bit over halfway through this time) it’s been brining back some interesting memories and such from my younger days, back in high school, when I first got into Dragonlance.

And one of the things about Raistlin was that he became known as the “Master of Past and Present.”

Yet we don’t get to be Master of Grief.

It’s also September 18th, as I type tonight.

It’s been one month since Chloe. August 18th was that most horrible day since losing Dad, losing her.

And while I’ve had a few tears well up a couple times…this past month has been full of me TRYING to be that Master of Grief, in AVOIDING it. In trying to NOT FEEL this loss. To not let it in. I have not–really–cried since that morning. I haven’t allowed myself. Whether it’s burying myself in binge-watching stuff on Youtube, or the last couple weeks of CSI Miami, or working, or having an audiobook on either for primary listening or background noise…

Here it is.

A month.

Still not ready to let this loss in.

I know she’s gone. I’m aware of that. I’ve made a bunch of changes to my physical surroundings, even where/how I sleep, adjusting for knowing she’s gone.

As I begin to settle in with the comfort that we got Sarahcat to and through the vet…that she does NOT have some massive kidney issue (I’d been terrified of the vet doing the physical checkup and there being some immediate realization of something being VERY BAD, the way it happened with Ziggy nearly 6 years ago). Blood work also came in without any surprises or points of significant concern from the vet…just to bring Sarah back in in a couple months to follow up and verify numbers…as I begin to settle in with this, I see where I may “have more room” soon TO “allow myself” to moreso FEEL Chloe’s loss, if I’m NOT looking at also losing Sarah, too.

This week–Wednesday night into Thursday–is going to be 90 weeks since losing Dad. NEXT WEEK Friday into Saturday (29th into 30th) will be 21 MONTHS.

Time passes.

Life goes on.

Master the grief?

I live with it. And that’s that.