Kulindahr - Archived Blog Posts

[Kulindahr]

How am I doing? Up, down; crying, giddy, analytical, numb, gabby, isolating -- all those things that hit when a guy is off-balance from a shock.

It helped a lot today that I'd already arranged to bail my new buddy out of jail -- or I wouldn't have been able to think about it or face it. So I got him out, he figured out how to cash some of his checks, and gave me $700 of what he owes me. Reducing that stress helped -- and the hugs.

The worst moment was when a friend called and asked if he could come over and talk to my dad. I barely managed to tell him what had happened. He came over; he'd finished a construction job today and the crew boss let the crew off. He held me for probably two minutes while I cried, then went with me while I took care of some errands.

My mood is all over the place... sometimes I just want to go walk till I can't walk any more, others I want to get totally drunk and high, others I just stare at the wall, others I wish I could line up dozens of hot guys and suck until I throw up from too much cum, others I want to go over to the motel with a lap pool and do skinnydipping laps until I can't swim any more, then sit in the hot tub....

Family friends and ladies from the church have brought over so much food we won't have to cook for a week. Mom got told by a couple of people that if she needed to go anywhere, or have anything bought and brought, to just call.

Our pastor came over and talked about a family memorial service, what we would like, where we wanted it, all that. He was back in forty minutes with a service worked up from what we'd said; I'm going to edit it tomorrow -- I have trouble focusing on anything.

I didn't sleep much last night, so I've taken two naps today. After my second one, mom and I talked some about the future. Social Security survivor benefits aren't much more than they were in the sixties, and will only be just less than a third of what dad was getting. We're going to have to work something out if we're going to stay.

We're pretty sure dad knew this was coming, better than we did. The day before he went to the hospital the last time, he was telling me all the things he wanted me to get done around the house and property; thinking about it, they're all things that will help increase the sale price. I think he wanted to have things taken care of before he went.

He gets buried Tuesday in Willamette National Cemetery. He could get a burial with honors, but he just wanted to be put in the ground. I talked with the funeral director about going, but they don't allow anyone anywhere near except the burial crew and funeral directors. He could tell I really wanted to go, and said if I dress moderately formal and met him there about a half hour before the burial, he'd take me in as an associate.

So I get to say goodbye one final time. It'll be sad, though, for one reason: dad wanted a plain casket that would rot so he could return to the soil, but they don't allow that at national cemeteries or under Oregon law.


Many times I really resented feeling tied down, living with my parents and taking care of them. But now I'm glad it went that way, 'cause I got to know him as a friend, not just a dad.

 

[Kulindahr]

There's a hole, not at the bottom of the sea, but in my heart.
I come down the stairs in the morning, and the bed is empty; dad isn't there any more, to sleep in.
I go to the kitchen to eat lunch, and he's not there any more with his walker, inching along to fix his own sandwich.
I get home late for dinner, and his chair is empty; dad isn't there waiting for me, not picking up his fork till I sit down and we say grace.
In the evening, mom and I turn on the TV, but he isn't there to pick what news we watch, or which humorous show.
Dad isn't around to say, "Fix this", or "Can you fix that, or should I call the electrician?", or to argue whether I can fix the plumbing and save the household a hundred dollars.
There aren't any jokes any more about me getting most of the mail that comes here.

I walk around the house and the yard, and there's a hole in my heart, a dad-shaped hole that just won't fill.

He'll never get to see my conservation and safety project finished, with its trail to the beach and three hillside covered in green with clover and alfalfa and native shrubs and trees. He won't be here to critique my new truck when I replace the rattletrap I have now. We'll never play Freecell together again, plotting the moves to squeeze out one more victory. Never again will his voice counter mom's when they know I'm going off to a swimming hole, to drink SkinnyDip beer and indulge in what the label says.

Sometimes the hole hides, and I can't even find it when I look. But it always comes back -- jumping out at me from his peonies or dahlias, lurking on the shelf where his cranberry juice still sits, ambushing me from my North American Hunting Club magazine that his friends always read more than I did.

He was going to take me to coffee with him, to join him with his friends, when he got better. But his legs got weaker, and then his heart... and then the little strokes -- chipping away at his hearing, stealing his memory bit by bit, playing games with his coordination, and at the end distorting his speech to where only mom or I could understand him.

Sometimes his words were clear: "I want to go home", he told the night nurse at the hospital. "Send me home", he pleaded with the doctors. But government regulations, MedicAid requirements, delayed his return to his home of three decades -- the nurses said he cried at every delay. He begged mom to get him out of there; he told me he wanted to be in his own bed.
But he never got to. Home Care Associates brought a hospital bed. We put it in the living room where his chair was, where he spent most of his hours except when he sat on the deck in the sun, sometimes slept there in the comforting warmth. I know he wanted to sit there one more time, but they stole that from him, with their approvals and clearances.

He did get one final day at home. We all watched his favorite shows. No night nurse came to be with him; that wasn't going to start till the next night -- everyone thought there would be more nights.
I missed being there for the final supper he ever had, because I was sure there would be more days, and went to work on my project -- but when I got back, he asked what I'd gotten done, as he always did. Then we watched the news he picked most often, and a BBS America show he liked.
And mom got tired and went to bed, and I sat there with him, keeping an eye on him, playing Freecell on my laptop. Then he started having trouble breathing....

I don't know when the hole will go away, or if. I don't know if it will be squeezing out a victory if it does. I can't even think much about the future, because that hole lurks to block my sight, my mind... my hopes and dreams.

<tune of "Hole in the Bottom of the Sea">

There's a hole in the bottom of my heart,
there's a hole in the bottom of my heart;
there's a hole, there's a hole, there's a hole in the bottom of my heart.

There's a hole in the bottom of my heart --
tripping me when I reach for a new start.
There a hole every day;
it just won't go away,
that hole in the bottom of my heart.

 

[Kulindahr]

(originally written for the Sports Bar thread in Fun & Games)

It does get better Kul, know it is hard to believe,but I have found it to be.

I hope you feel better soon!

The private memorial service helped. Mom and I picked verses and made suggestions, my sister picked a hymn, and our pastor put it together.
It was the first time I've sung "Abide With Me" with my voice shaking.

Family tensions -- my "orientation", my older brother's cancer, my brother-in-law's self-righteousness (he doesn't realize that if he wasn't married to my sister, he wouldn't even be allowed in this house), and some lesser items -- made it hard to just grieve together.

Last night I never really got to sleep. I'd start falling off, then my mind would come alive with "if only" thoughts, jerking me awake.

Then today I had court for the charge stuck on me because of my new buddy... who is close to getting banned from here. If my psychologist hadn't said that he's good for me, he probably would be already.

Now I'm just tired... again. Tomorrow I go to see dad buried, then hang around Portland till evening for a JUB mini-get-together.

Tonight I hope to have my buddy to hang onto, and sleeping pills, and maybe a hot buttered rum or something.

 

[Kulindahr]

in a concrete box.

It's lunchtime as I write this -- chicken quesadilla with a margarita at Embers (Portland's oldest gay bar, IIRC). This is where I landed after watching my dad's (biodegradable) coffin go into its concrete sleeve/liner that it gets buried in -- the concrete is so the heavy equipment they use to put coffins in the ground has the same size and shape to grab in every case. It's weird -- for the no-funeral burial, the whole thing just goes into the ground; for a burial with graveside service, it goes in the ground, then they pull the concrete lid and raise the coffin again.

Dad's spot is in such a new part of the National Cemetery that the section isn't even on the big map in the office! As busy as they are there, it'll be a week till there's a marker stone, and nearly a month before there's sod.

I want to go back once there's sod, and scatter clover seed -- dad loved clover. For now, mom and I made a big bouquet of his dahlias and such, which will stay there till the stone goes in.

Since only he and mom really accepted me, out of the whole family, it seems very appropriate to me that I'm having lunch and a drink right now in the gay bar that pretty much saved my life back when the rest of the family walked out on me my first Christmas out.


<bartender! a Naval Screwdriver in honor of my dad!>

 

[Kulindahr]

It's lunchtime as I write this -- chicken quesadilla with a margarita at Embers (Portland's oldest gay bar, IIRC). I didn't plan to be here; after wandering aimlessly for a while, this is where I landed after watching my dad's (biodegradable) coffin go into its concrete sleeve/liner that it gets buried in -- the concrete is so the heavy equipment they use to put coffins in the ground has the same size and shape to grab in every case. It's weird -- for the no-funeral burial, the whole thing just goes into the ground; for a burial with graveside service, it goes in the ground, then they pull the concrete lid and raise the coffin again.

Dad's spot is in such a new part of the National Cemetery that the section isn't even on the big map in the office! As busy as they are there, it'll be a week till there's a marker stone, and nearly a month before there's sod.

I want to go back once there's sod, and scatter clover seed -- dad loved clover. For now, mom and I made a big bouquet of his dahlias and such, which will stay there till the stone goes in. It's too bad they can't have permanent flowers, but all the stones are flat in the ground so the whole place can be mowed easily.

Since only dad and mom really accepted me, out of the whole family, it seems very appropriate to me that I'm having lunch and a drink right now in the gay bar that pretty much saved my life back when the rest of the family walked out on me my first Christmas out. I felt like ending my life then, and here is another ending... both with a feel of unreality.


<bartender! a Naval Screwdriver in honor of my dad!>

 

[Kulindahr]

Missing my dad hits me like an invisible wave rolling in off the beach.

You'd think the hollow feeling would just be like any other, a sort of emptiness where a chunk of the heart used to be. But I'm finding out it isn't: when loneliness or disappointment strike, that hollowness magnifies them all.
Like today, working at my project: I found a section vandalized, work I'd done to make it look nice, torn out. The disappointment itself was crushing, ripping a hollow spot inside; then not having any buddies here to be with and face that with opened another hollow spot -- then the hollow spot from missing my dad joined those. But it wasn't (hollow spot) * 3, it was (hollow spot) * (hollow spot) * (hollow spot), not three times the hollowness, but hollowness cubed.

 

[Kulindahr]

My dad used to spend a lot of time napping on the couch, or in his recliner, the year before he died. Another favorite spot was his chair out on the deck, where white walls reflected sunshine onto him and it was very, very warm.

I was going to sit down in his chair on the deck the other day, and as I started to, I got the feeling I'd be sitting in his lap, like he was right there. It was a little freaky, but after I went to sit somewhere else, I sort of forgot about it.

A couple of days later, I was kicking it on the couch, reading, and as I turned a page I felt cramped, had trouble breathing. Deep down I was sure I was in the same space as my dad, that just out of reach of vision and other senses, he was there. I rolled off the couch without stopping to think: I was too uncomfortable there, sharing space.

Then yesterday I was relaxing in his recliner, which is right where we had his hospital bed when he came back from the hospital the last time. All at once I stopped dozing and came fully awake, panicking, chilled: I didn't just feel him there as in the other two places, but I felt him laying there dying, reaching toward the light again, trying to breathe... stopping.
The recliner didn't cooperate; I was shaking and in a sweat by the time I got clear.

It gets to me. My mind is really messed up. It's been hard to concentrate ever since dad died, but this has me really messed up --
Like this morning: I got out a bowl for cereal, got out milk and poured it in. Then I got out a box of cereal... and put it in the refrigerator. The milk was still sitting on the counter. I took a spoon from the silverware drawer. When I stuck it in the bowl, I couldn't figure out where the cereal went. I looked in the cupboard, but its spot was empty. Then I noticed the milk on the counter, and put it away -- and there was the cereal in the refrigerator.
When I started over, I almost poured the milk down the drain, because cereal is supposed to go in the bowl first.

Mom says dad hasn't left yet.

 

[Kulindahr]

Walking past the dining room table today, I found myself thinking that something was wrong. It took a moment to realize that I was expecting dad's cane to be there... but of course it wasn't.

I missed seeing it there. All at once I realized I've missed the strangest things: helping him get his walker over the door jamb, or turned around in the hall; helping him up out of his chair to get hold of his walker; picking up his cane from where he dropped it; carrying his bowl of cereal to the table because his hands were shaking.

For a long time I resented having to do all those for him. Near the end, I was coming to enjoy doing them.

Now it's over, and it still seems strange not to see his walker parked by his bed, or his cane hanging on the dining room chair. The truly sad thing is that I don't even know where those things went.

 

[Kulindahr]

I had a moment of uncontrolled tears again today.

Yesterday I salvaged some logs along a county road, for firewood. There was also a pile of old lumber someone had lost, which I grabbed.

Tonight I went out to cut up the lumber, stack what I could, park the monster (like almost 30" across) chunks for future splitting... I split some smaller chunks, and loaded two buckets with lumber pieces, and headed in. First the chunks went on the porch, then I went back for the buckets.

As I kicked my boots off, memories of dad and I doing that, over and over, keeping the house warm for winter, flooded in. I couldn't open the inner door of the small porch, I just stood there, hating the wood, shedding salt water... wanting my dad back.

 

[Kulindahr]

While taking a break from taking down Christmas decorations (now that the twelve days of Christmas are over) light reflected from the floor. The pattern it revealed caught my attention.

It looked like what I've seen in some of the places I used to plow around in 4WD, when I still had a truck up to it: lines on the surface, bunched, not quite following each other. It looked like tracks from wheels going back and forth along the same route, not sweating over precision, just following that path because it was the obvious and convenient one.

Kitchen tracks.

I grinned, but that died before blossoming -- because I realized what it was.

It was my dad.

For the last year or so, my dad used a walker to get around. Every day he headed out to the deck to sit in the sun; every day he came back... every day he came out to meals, every day he returned to his recliner in the living room.
Every one of those trips followed that path.

I feel like a piece of me is still standing there, stuck in a rut, but not going anywhere. It's like I'm still in the kitchen... just not making tracks.

 

[Kulindahr]

As part of the process of getting my parents' house ready to sell, my bedroom is now in their former one. There's really only one logical arrangement in there, so my bed is in the same place theirs was.

I woke up, grumpily committing myself to sitting up and rolling out of bed, when sudden;y it seemed my dad was sitting right there, right where he always did before rolling into bed, or getting out. He seemed angry, like it was his bed and his room, and what was I doing there anyway?

Memories flooded...

I told him that since he was dead, he didn't have much need for the space, and anyway, to go take it up with mom.

Dad lost, normality lost, a world lost...

I sat up and looked at the clock, and an hour had gone by. I don't know what filled it. I felt lost, adrift in a lost world -- but was the lost one the old one, or the new one?

 

[Kulindahr]

It's the strangest thing. You can think you're tough, rugged, ready to march forward to the death....

and life says, "No -- the the pain!"


Princess Bride has long been one of my favorite movies, since I wandered into the room at the house in college, where thirty-some guys, most with gals at their sides, sat watching a large TV screen where an old guy in a bishop's hat was saying, "Mehwedge!". I watched the rest, and stayed for the second showing.

It's always been a fun movie, delightful, flippant, romantic, playful -- a movie to delight in and relax to.

Well, it always was -- maybe it will be again. But tonight, in the swordfight scene in the lower castle, laughter at the fifth repetition of "Hello! I am Inigo Montoya! You killed my father -- prepare to die!" turned to tears moments later.

"Promise me everything I want", says Inigo.
"Everything I have, and more", says the Count.
"I want my father back, you son of a bitch", as the sword slid home in the villain's heart -- and mine.

I want my father back... but who am I to call a son of a bitch?

 

[Kulindahr]

In a Religion forum thread, someone commented he is gay and Christian and happy that way. That grabbed me and held me, and made me think.

For a long time I was a Christian, but rarely happy that way. I was chained down by rules and definitions of righteousness that tormented me, which makes happiness something more theoretical than actual.

Then one day I met a very devout, deeply conservative Christian RN, who on learning of my problems with depression, advised me to battle it by finding a place where I could shed all my clothes and absorb sunlight with every square inch of my skin. The Gospel had already been battering away at the rules-orientation, but that kicked a hole in the wall. Not too long after, I began to really understand a prayer God had given me months earlier:

Lord, teach me always to follow my heart;
teach my heart to follow you.

That rather throws rules out the door.


And for a good piece of time, I was a Christian and happy.

Then I started facing that I was sexual -- after being raised that sex was evil, hard-ons were of the devil, and such. I didn't know where to put that in my life, and the happiness started to lose its place.

Some time later, I began to realize that not only was I sexual, but I liked other guys -- and, as far as I could recall, always had. Happiness crumbled before this.

Eventually, I accepted this -- and was gay and Christian, and most definitely not happy.

Acceptance brought a certain relief, and even joy, but I can't say that I've been gay and Christian and happy; I've been happy as the sexual person I am, mostly now attracted to guys but occasionally to a rare gal, but definitely not happy as a Christian.

I think I'm finally coming out the other side, emerging into being happy as both.

It's a very different thing.

 

[Kulindahr]

It seemed so normal:

there I was, under the rhododendron, pulling weeds and clipping off the bluebells before they go to seed. Birds were singing from the trees, swallows swooping low over the yard in search of insects; kids walked by on the street, laughing. My stomach grumbled in the way that means it's time for lunch, but I knew I didn't have to worry, so as always, I pulled some more, clipped some more, waiting for Mom to call, "Time for lunch", and I'd call back, "Let me finish this bucket", and she'd holler, "Your father needs your help to get to the table".

I got my bucket -- really a twenty-gallon tub -- filled with clippings, and wondered when lunch really was. As I backed out from under brilliant blossoms of red and pink, back into the yard, my dog Bammer came sniffing along.

That's when it hit me: Dad's been gone a year and a half, and Mom is in a retirement community. I'm not doing the flower beds to keep them the way Dad likes, but to keep the house looking good for sale. I'm the last here, and won't be for long.


It'll never seem normal again.

 

[Kulindahr]

If anyone had told me that things like this would happen, I would have said, "Uh-huh -- sure".


So I'm nearly asleep one night, with the house cozy and everything outside dark and damp -- that's what civilization's about, keeping our the dark and damp, right? My dog Bammer is curled against my feet, and I'm wondering if I'm going to fall asleep before the wind the meteorologists forecast arrives to keep me awake. I sort of hope I do; my sleep has been off a little of late.

You know that feeling of the wash of cold air as someone opens the door to the shower, or ducks into the tent from a frosty morning, or trundles into the kitchen with an armload of groceries when it's all of a handful of degrees above freezing out, and you don't even have a shirt on? It was like that, what hit me, and then I was suddenly awake. Someone was climbing in -- but not besides me, and not on top of me: through me. I felt the cold draft of air as the covers lifted, and felt someone else moving into my space, and the mattress sinking under the weight.

And there was a grumpy mumble, or maybe just the sense of a grumpy mumble, "You're in my space".


Yep -- my dad, again. If I'd ever thought about him 'haunting' my mom and I after he died, this isn't the sort of thing I would have predicted. I would have expected to hear him from around the corner, after lunch, saying, "Take a break!", when none of us had been doing anything all day. I would have thought to encounter him in the kitchen in the middle of the night, getting a glass of water and sneaking a half-piece of bread with some peanut butter.

But no, he comes invading/sharing my space -- again. My space.


Dad, it's not your space any more.
For that matter, it won't be mine much longer, either -- mom is selling the house, hopefully soon.
I don't know what kind of space departed dads take up, but it totally destroys my sleep when you try to share.
Go say hi to Mom -- she's at Five Rivers.
Yes, I miss you. But whether you're some weird construct bubbling up out of my grey matter, or a psychic echo of the past, or really there, I can't deal with this.


After a few million hours of trembling, frozen in place, I notice that the cold draft is gone. Bammer is licking the back of my knees and poking my butt with his nose: something woke him up, and he wants to know if I'm okay.

Yeah, Bammer, I'm okay. Let's go grab a snack, then come back and curl up in our space.



Later, Dad.

 

[Kulindahr]

Proof of suspicions or beliefs can arrive in different ways.

Right now I am without a home; I'm borrowing other people's roofs. I have the money I need, or rather the cash flow, to get an RV sufficient to serve me probably for the rest of my life. So I figure, let's do it.

But my credit union says it doesn't finance things as old as the RV I want, regardless of the fact that the asking price is $5k under its actual value.

While I'm trying to figure out what to do, that RV gets sold -- someone else got the good deal.

Then I stop at an RV place where I find they have their own financing. The sales guy knows the RV I was looking at, and said his finance outfit would have loaned me the money for it at that price; that's what their chart shows. Too late; it's gone.

But he's got one almost identical; it doesn't have the solar panels covering the roof, or the multi-fuel generator, but it's the same model, a year newer. So I fill out an application for it. Unfortunately, since it's priced by the book, the chart says I don't have enough income to make payments, even though my budget says I do.

But if I get a co-signer....



I have three siblings, all married. Older brother -- the one who said I destroyed the family -- and wife make serious six figures each. Sister and husband make high and mid five-figures, respectively. Younger brother and wife make low five and low six, respectively.

None will co-sign. Older brother won't even answer, sister says they don't co-sign, sister-in-law says "We can't do that right now", even though she agrees I would be able to make the payments and she'd never have to worry about it.

I sort of figured, that Christmas not so long ago when everyone walked out when I showed up, that I really didn't have any family any more. Odd that the proof came this way. Odd that any family would leave a brother homeless, especially when it won't cost anything but a signature.


Life is no fun, when family isn't family.

 

[Kulindahr]

Funny, how useful dreams can be -- them, and random thoughts and imaginings that can be attached to them.

I'd dreamed of having a hot young guy to hang with, and we were chilling in some vehicle, like a van or something. I'd just had an orgasm -- and I felt miserable.


I've noted before in my blog -- I hope in this category, though that's not important -- that I grew up believing that sex is evil, being horny is the devil's influence, and all that. I like to think I'm past all that, but a couple of decades of conviction at the start of life don't go away so easily. So sometimes after an orgasm, I feel horrid, guilty, miserable.


So in my not-quite asleep, not really awake mode, I pulled this kid close, and he guessed I wasn't interested in more sex just then. And I explained to him what I just abbreviated above, about my upbringing and sex and all. I told him how I was sure that beating off was cooperating with Satan, and so was having sex. I explained that it was steps in giving in, from being stimulated by horny feelings to acting on them, getting deeper into the devil's realm. And the last step, of course, I said, is that orgasm was totally in Satan's realm, that cumming is defeat.



No, it isn't.

 

[Kulindahr]

Every now and then I write something I think has style and punch. This one is from a thread I expect to be trimmed shortly, and I decided I wanted to save it, sort of an example to myself in the future:


This is such self-righteous bullshit as to hardly be worth answering. But lest anyone think there is the least bit of value in such a personal attack masquerading as a diatribe....

There's this thing called "the English language". It has rules, such as spelling and grammar. When one throws things around contrary to those rules, one is either ignorant or a fool.

In my opening post, I basically called for people to actually use English here, and not some bastardized personal version of whatever idiosyncratic imitation of human speech they've cobbled together. When people don't use English, and that means following the rules, they are not engaging in discussion, but braying or barking like beasts.

That you cheer for the beasts says all that needs be said.

 

[Kulindahr]

This will sound crazy to just about everyone who hasn't read my blog entries:

a few nights ago, for the first time in my life I experienced a moment when sex was fun -- not duty, not being dominated by lust, not pain, but just fun.

In the midst of dealing with my brother dying, I can't tell how I feel about that. That night it was astounding to me, and briefly I was giddy about it; now I'm wondering if it's even worth remembering, because I doubt it will ever happen again.