I am standing in a dark room. I turn, flailing with my arms, looking to connect. occasionally I hit something. More often than not it is hard, sharp and painful.” you will never be anything if you keep reading, big boys don’t cry, toughen up ”

Sometimes I touch something soft, like the time he taught me to ride my bike, and the last days when he reached out to grab my hand, after I had said ” I love you “, or when he made a slight move to embrace me.

As I flail though, with increasing urgency, I am touching less, and less. Ever since he died I feel him slipping away. He wasn’t much in my life anyway, an apparition named Father, but now he is slipping through the fingers of my mind like the ghost he always was.

I started to parent myself just over 2 years ago. Now I don’t have to try and grasp that tenuous form any more.  It used to be semi solid, but now I can see through it. Soon it will be a blank spot. It will always be there though, an absence, an empty space. A void to fill.

I never believed in ghosts, but now I see the attraction. To have something to fill the empty spaces in life, the places where a life has been torn asunder. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I say absence leaves a bewildered heart asking why, why, why.

I am going for a walk now. I will stop to hug a solid tree, and later tonight I will also get a chance to hold you in my arms. I will talk, look, listen, and squeeze you to make sure you are really there.