I was going to be very responsible and productive.

Instead I spent all of ten minutes in my father's condo, nine of them on the floor of the entrance way, sobbing.

I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow to visit my friend Amick and so I really wanted to try to get a lot done today. Before going to my Dad's I drove straight from Venice to The Orange County Probate Court so that I could lodge a copy of his will. (I had been putting this off for weeks.) I knew I wouldn't have a problem finding the court as it is located on the same street as UCI Medical Center where my father spent whole weeks this year.

What I didn't know was the effect it would have on me to take that drive. When I began this blog my father was only days away from returning home from this hospital. He had been there for a total of five weeks at that point and had spent a previous three weeks there in March and April. During that time I drove there from Hollywood everday to see him. I would usually go by his house first and collect the newspaper and any odd little thing that he requested the previous day.

It turns out that the Court is right next door to UCI and as I took that same familiar drive from my father's I was completely overcome with memories of his last weeks, his last days and his last breaths. From the parking garage at the court I could see the parking garage at the hospital, the one in which I have parked dozens of times, at all hours of the day and night, the one in which I have traveled to and from visiting my father.

As I parked I began to cry, wishing so badly to have any time with him back, even those days in the hospital. I rememberd my annoyance half of the time that I was driving 40 miles back and forth everyday, remembered that I did not know that by August he would be dead, remembered thinking that I would still have a father for at least two more years. I got out of the car and slung my purse over my shoulder, stood up straight and walked the long sidewalk to the court, clutching the certified copy of my father's will.

I've been through this before, all of these emotions, each one of them so far. It is so strange to go through them again. The idea that if I walked into that hospital and signed in at the lobby, took the elevator to the fourth floor, walked down the hallway on my left, all the way to the last room, pushed that door open, that I would see him sitting there, waiting for me and happy like an expectant child.

I've already had these same thoughts about my mother and about Julie. Thinking that it wouldn't be that much to ask for, just to have a couple of those last days, even the ugly ones, even the unconscious and emaciated days, the throwing up days, the moaning in pain days. It wouldn't be like asking for the healthy days, the days when we were just mother and daughter at the grocery store or two best friends talking for four hours on the telephone. It be wouldn't like asking for one of the mornings we sat as father and daughter eating blueberry pancakes and reading the newspaper to each other.

And just because I've been through this before doesn't make it any easier. I guess I thought it would. I still haven't been able to throw away my father's glasses. They are sitting on the bathroom counter in that darkened condo right now just as my mother's contact lenses sat on her bathroom counter for weeks in Atlanta. It seems impossible to just throw away this thing that the person needed everyday. One afternoon, walking into her bathroom I simply slid them over and into the trashcan.

I haven't been able to open the hallway closet yet either. Hanging there are three jackets that my father bought in February during one of those weekend sales at Robinsons May. He was really pleased with them and modeled each one in front of me and Liz one Sunday afternoon.

I just don't know how I'm going to do this. Most of the days this week that I've gone down there, I've been able to do little else than sit on the carpet and cry. It's starting to become the only place where I can cry, like some sort of emotional haven where I can let myself think about all the things I usually don't.
7:24:55 PM     comment []