Empty Spaces

I dreamt of my father. We were at the house out in the badlands of eastern Colorado and he was rushing my brother, sister, the Grumpy Old Men, and myself into his auto. My mother was still inside. It seemed rather shocking when my father got into the vehicle and started it up whilst my mother was still in the house.

"What about Mom?" I asked.

"We've got to go!" My father snapped. "She can catch up."

My eyes opened up to Chevy. He nuzzled me gently. He was letting me know that the hounds were all hungry and going outside to use the loo would be nice too. I got up, the dream clinging to the mathematics of my thoughts like cobwebs and tree sap.

My ten-pence dream analysis? Perhaps my father is running. Whether it's from a phantasm of memory or just from himself in general is conjecture.

He has spoken of loosing that loving feeling for the new place. Too many children. Too much noise at all hours. He already wants to move again.

I cannot help but wonder if my father has been caught up in the if only's. If only I can get out of the badlands. If only I can be closer to my kids. If only I get rid of the animals and start over.

He got rid of the animals and moved and is closer to my siblings and I. And then reality set in. There are still the phantasms and the memories. All that time and all the empty spaces.

My sister postulated my father sits at home by himself and it drives him nuts. He's got his guitars, films, music, and books, but he doesn't always have someone to talk to, or even just wish he could have alone time from. It's as if he's run out of distractions. Perhaps he is listless and drifting.

I can somewhat empathize, although it was not a mate that I lost all those months ago. Still, there are days I struggle to keep from collapsing into a sobbing ball. Sometimes, I feel that listlessness. Detached and hollow.

Mentioning my mother is gone is something I wish I could avoid, but it's there. It happened. I cannot deny it. I guess it just bothers me when it does get mentioned in front of a stranger or someone I've not seen for awhile, and the social awkwardness of them trying to express condolence and me pretending to accept it has to play out like a fucking dog and pony show.

I am not sure what to do for my father, or if there's really anything I can do. Folk wisdom states we all grieve in our own special little ways. A trite fluffy-bunny approach, but I begrudgingly admit to seeing the truth to it. It seems a given my father is still grieving because I know my sister and I are.

My brother too. I theorize that's why he made sure to be overly busy with landscaping projects and said my sister outlaw was being so needy about having quality time with him when my father was moving, and, thus didn't help; he was trying to distract himself. Throwing himself into work as way to deal with the empty spaces of my mother's death, leaving my father, sister, and I to deal with the emotional wreckage and shrapnel that was stirred up with the move.

Thanks, ti ti, but so it goes...

In just a few days more than a month, we'll all be heading into the outback to scatter my mother's ashes, as per her request. My father has mentioned how this event has just hung over him like a pall. Perhaps that is what my father needs to deal with the empty spaces and place the final bit of closure on this whole thing. This, like my speculation with my brother, is a theory. One, which will not be proven as fact until just a little over a month from the here and now.