Why Didn't The World Stop







Recently, on July 20th of this year, I lost my dad, James Kenneth Holder to a major stroke. I had been thinking about blogging about it to get some of this out of my system, but had held back because I did not want to hurt anyone's feelings along the way. Now that I have had some time to think about it, I am moving ahead, because mostly this blog is about me, my thoughts and my family, plus it is cheaper than a therapist and I think it will help me, he, he!



I suppose I am experiencing what a lot of victims of crime say that they feel...like after a trauma, they feel sort of suspended in time, their world has stopped and they are flabbergasted and even angry that the world has the gall too keep on spinning in spite of their pain. Doesn't the world know what has happened to me? I can't believe that things are just going to keep going? These are silly questions we all know, but we still feel them whether they are silly or not. I am still taking it all in, now that the Memorial is over, my dad's ashes have been spread, and his things gathered up...now I get to grieve I guess, my turn. A turn I'm not sure I'm ready to take. Yesterday I spent the day working on my car...I reached a stopping point with a problem I was having and found myself reaching for the phone to call my dad for advice like I always do, then I realized that mom has turned dad's phone off...and the number is gone...and so is dad. This sort of thing just seizes me up, time seems to just stop and an ache rises up from deep down inside of my heart that seems bottomless. A darkness flows over me when I realize that the days of those phone calls are long gone, gone forever. I find myself talking to dad all the time and wanting to hold on to everything I can of him to try and keep him around...and resenting the heck out of anyone who wants to hurry that process up and get rid of all of those same things. They say you never really become a man until your father dies, I think sometimes I'd like to strangle whoever said that. Perhaps we do have to grow up a little more when our father's die, but I don't think any of us are ever ready to do that.



There are so many things that I miss about my dad.
• I miss the way he smelt, whether it was his Old Spice aftershave or the way he smelt after working outside all day...there was a comforting smell about my dad that's difficult to explain. When I was a boy, I used to love to curl up on the couch and take a nap with my dad on lazy Sunday afternoons...I'll never forget how safe I felt there.
• I miss the way he would tell stories about the Navy, and I'd laugh like crazy when he'd go into some obscenity laden rant about something that annoyed him.
• I miss the way dad had seemed to be calling me more and more often in the year preceding his death. He always call and brightly say, "This is you dad..." when he was leaving me a message, just like he did the day of his stroke, only an hour or so right before. I told him I loved him all the time, I never did miss a chance, and for that I am grateful. I helped plan a Memorial service for a bunch of people down on the lake, and realized that I didn't know hardly any of them...and felt strangely alone in the crowd of people that had gathered there.
• I miss my dad's hands. He has my same very white complexion, and his hands were covered in scar tissue, scratches and bruises from working on air conditioners and all manner of junk in his workshop under his lake house. His skin was always reddened by the sun, and his hands were strong, way beyond their size. In dad's last week after the stroke, he was only able to move his left hand, but it was as strong as ever, and he could push you away or pull you in with that hand as forcefully as he ever could.
• I miss the way that dad understood all my issues at work, as a police officer, he knew exactly what I was going through. He would sit and listen, share advice, and never made me feel like a kid, it was man to man and I knew that I was accepted no matter what I said.
• I miss the way dad always made all of us feel safe. Dad was strong way beyond his size, and though a quiet man, he would explode on anyone who threatened his family. As a kid, I always slept so sound knowing that no one would dare try and break into our house, because my dad, the toughest cop in the world, would beat them up, shoot them or some combination of the two that no one would ever want to discover...and no one ever did.
I 've mentioned in a previous blog entry about the comfort I used to get as a kid from hearing my dad come home late at night from work and hearing his heavy leather boots fall on our hardwood floors. Hearing that and the creaking of his leather gun belt and the smell of his after shave always made me feel so safe and I would go right to sleep. Now, it is my heavy leather police boots that hit the floor each night, my gun belt that creaks, my keys that jingle...but when I peel off all the turtle gear and crawl into bed, I'm still that kid in his speedy Gonzales footie pajamas who is still waiting up for his daddy to come home and who wonders why the world didn't stop turning.