Oh tender day
remember her sweet touch;
mourning doves coo

I had a dream the other night that Dad was alive and very sick with his lung cancer. It was very sad when I woke up. It felt so real. Last year at this time I remember I was starting to get ready for Katie’s graduation and wondering if Dad would be alive for it. I remember thinking how I was going to have a funeral and a graduation close together. It was such a difficult time. I can’t believe it’s almost been a whole year. In someways it feels like a few weeks ago. I have to try and not remember the last 12 hours of his life because it is very painful to me. The disbelief of his final breath. The casual visiting of our family in his room that morning. too many too many sad things…

Mom and I went to decorate Dad’s grave today. Put up spring flowers and took down the roses that mom called “winter”. The wind was blowing so fiercely we wonder if the flowers will stay put in the vase. Mom stuffed them with some paper and we will hope for the best. We drove around then and looked at all the graves. I actually like our cematary. It’s quite old with some really neat old tombstones.
Dad is gone now almost 9 months. I remember the awfulness of it all in waves. There was good too. Lots of good. I never spent so much time with Dad until the last two years of his life. I’m glad we were able to keep Dad at home. It was hard, but why must everything be easy.

Been missing Dad lately. We found a bunch of old pictures the other day. Pics of Mom and Dads wedding, Dad at the grocery store sale, Moms brothers and sisters and Mother in the front lawn of grandmas house. Brought back a flood of memories. Sometimes it’s just easier to get through he days by being superficial.

It’s a sad day really. I think of Dad, gone for 7 months now and I can’t believe it. Again, it seems like a different world, a different time, place. I cried last night and felt sad. Mark’s dad died of lung cancer too. Mark was only 19 and I never got to meet his dad. I worry about my children. Will they be “prone” to lung cancer? Alec has already had a “cyst” removed twice from his lower leg at the growth plate, what does that mean for him? Katie, my oldest, is smoking. I am sick about it. So sick. So very very sick. I don’t know what to do. She is almost 19, in college. She has to be responsible for her own actions. She is not a stupid girl. I have talked and talked and talked about lung cancer and smoking forever. She saw her grandpa shrink slowly every day and die of lung cancer. She smokes. god it hurts to think of it.,,

Thanksgiving gone and already Christmas in few days. Time is flying by. I have been re-reading a book that is about a woman who takes care of her dad who is dying of lung cancer. I hate it, yet I read it. Sounds true to me. Hard to take and hard to put down. In some ways it feels good to know that other people have gone through the same experiences as you have. Some comfort in that. A week ago or so, Mom made a Christmas tree for Dad’s grave and we took it to the cemetary. It fits right over the vase. We also took a greenery type deer and put him there too. It’s so hard to believe that Dad is dead. I have been trying to block out thoughts of his sickness because it is hard to think of him like that now. It makes me feel so very very sad. In fact I can’t really write anymore now.

I keep thinking about Dad and when he died. The hospital room that day, the way he “talked” with his eyes until the very end. I keep remembering the last breath he took. I can’t help it and I hate to think of it and I wish I could think of other things. Better things.
Not long after Dad died Mark and I thought we would go fishing at the creek. I went into Mom and Dads garage to get Dad’s tackle box. I picked it up, opened it up and my mouth dropped open. Inside were a jillion cigarette butts. Neatly packed on top of his lures. In fact it looked like they belonged there. Obviously he hadn’t quit smoking. I guess I knew that…deep inside I knew it. I shook my head and Mark and Mom stood there with their mouths dropped open. I felt such a…dismay…it seems like I was always telling my Dad not to smoke when I was a little girl. I hated the smell…although sometimes now I like the slight whiff of a cigarette burning… I don’t smoke…can’t stand it…I remember thinking…I wonder when he will die of cancer back when I was little.
terrible thoughts
Mom and I picked out a headstone. There is a fishing scene on the back. The only thing it needs is a cigarette and the picture would look like him.
Wish I could sleep

Everytime I mow out at Mom and Dads house (weekly) I feel sad. I begin to think of Dad’s last breathe, me saying, “Mom, he’s going!”, how he gasped twice and then…nothing. I remember how I lowered the head of his bed once minute before then, saying, “Just for a second Dad” and then another nurse and I pulled him up so that his feet weren’t pressed against the foot of the bed. It was then, that he died. Right after we did that. Right after that. Right after that. I see his open mouth, like a baby bird. I see his sunken eyes. I hear that silence. The absence of breath. I see it over and over and over and over and over. I cannot say that this is why he died. I know that. But it feels like it was the reason sometimes.
Everyhing feels so strange about the cancer time. Not like a dream but…something not quite lucid just the same. Like a fog covered the last 2 years. Like a mist that descended and made everything seem close and thick and difficult and all our own world somehow. Like a deserted island. It’s hard to explain.
Mom is doing okay. She sleeps at our house quite often. The empty couch in her living room, too much to bear. The silence of an empty home at night is much different than a quit afternoon.

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Back to soup…just the thought sends me into raptures now. The whiff of an onion brings tears of joy. God I love soup! Chicken, vegetable, beef, cold, hot, rice, noodle…even thick stew with cabbage…I’ve even made okra when the crisper was empty. So you ask…what does a book of matches have to do with soup? Well…for me…everything. When I was around 8 or so I fell in love with fire. I loved nothing more than going to my grandpa’s home in the Fall during potato harvest because after we were done picking up the “taters” we would be sure to have a bonfire. I would wash up a few of the smaller potatos and prick them with a little pearly pen knife and poke them under the glowing embers with a green stick. When I judged them done by the smell…I would roll them out. Just watching the steam under the twilight sky and to feel the heat of the fire on my face and to smell the good dark earth of the overturned soil…that was heaven to me. I didn’t often eat what I cooked I just wanted to try to be as near to fire as I could. Bask in the glow and stare entranced into the orange flames. I would sometimes pretend I was an Indian and my only food was that potato. I would save it for a long time andnibble on it. Then I would”feed my stock” (grandpa’s chickens) the left over pieces. My love of fire began at an early age. I soon wanted to make my own fires even though we lived in town. We had a large lot though and lived close to the railroad tracks. We had a huge Cedar tree out our back yard…and it was under the wide sweeping branches at the base of the trunck that I dug my first fire pit. I was a good Indian. I dug a large pit, lined it with stones that I found in the ditch beside the railroad tracks. I used kindling and small sticks then a few larger ones and voila! I had a lovely fire blooming beneath the canopy of the cedar tree in nothing flat. I had a watering can full of water ready to douse it at a moments notice, an old Foldgers coffee can washed and filled half full of water, and the vegetables I had managed to find washed up and waiting to be added to the “pot”. The only thing I felt even a pang of guilt about was where I “found” my soup ingredients!

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