An Imagined Life

       I've been missing my dad something fierce since Spring. Spring has a tendency to do this- everything is coming back to life, except my dad. When the green buds break through the earth, the trees burst back to life, and you start seeing people outside again, it is just a reminder. A reminder of the things my daddy no longer sees or does.

        Old men mowing their lawns break my heart. Why can't my dad be an old man mowing his lawn? What would he look like as an old man? How would he have spent his retirement years?

       Motorcycles break my heart. They also send me into a panic. I feel like I must protect this rider but then I also feel like I have to get far far away because with every car that passes him by I can imagine the impact. I worry no one sees him except me and that any second he will be hit and gone, in an instant, without warning.

        New construction breaks my heart. My dad always wanted a nice house. He would love mine. I bet he would have moved into my neighborhood. One of those new houses could have been his. What would life have been like with him across the street? How would our relationship have changed? Would I love it? What kind of relationship would my kids have with him? Would we have family dinners together? I want him to live across the street damn it!

      I can't stop the constant flood of thoughts, questions, and dreams of what his life could have been. I can't even begin to list the things that conjure him, it is endless. It is like he is constantly there but not and sometimes that is comforting and sometimes it is so very frustrating.

      I find myself imagining the "What If" and that, my friend, can drive you insane. But sometimes you need it I suppose. Everyone grieves in their own way, in their own time. And the stages of grief, well they are random, and they come and go. Once you think you've passed one well there it is again.

     The life that I've imagined my dad would currently be living is a great one. Maybe it would have happened, maybe it wouldn't have but I will never know. So I'm sure I will continue to dream his life out for him and try not to be so sad it isn't true.