When do you say goodbye?

what was i just thinking about...

oh yeah, BB's girlfriend, C.
i was thinking how she reminded me of a woman in a woody allen film i still can't nail down* in my mind. when he showed me the picture all i said was, Wow, I really like her collection of bottles over the door.

the things that you think about in the morning.

oh yeah, maybe i was thinking about my dad and my step-grandpa who died last Friday.

dad and i finally agreed on something. when you say goodbye to someone when they're about to die or when they die, everything that happens right after is moot. the funeral. the guy who you hire to stand behind a podium and talk about the person they don't know who just died. and you have to sit there and listen to the droning and then it's over and then what. what. what. what.

then nothing.

goodbye happens for different people at different times. saying goodbye to my bio-dad happened with a release of balloons over the pacific ocean, with a prayer with my mom, with tears...and then dinner.

my dad said he'd been saying goodbye to his dad for a long time. i was really pumping him for emotion. come on dad! show me some feeling!! stop the robotics! every time after i asked him what he was feeling about losing a parent, after i said But Dad, Doesn't it feel kind of weird? he told me that it'd been coming for a while and that grandpa had been in pain and that it was really a blessing. But Dad. How does it feel to you? turns out he'd been answering me all along.

he said goodbye long before the death. he said goodbye when the man he knew disappeared under the cloak of alzheimers. he doesn't feel much anymore at all about the goodbye it happened so long ago.

he said when i said goodbye to my (bio)dad, it was sudden and that was the difference.

all i know is bio-dad's ashes are on their way to my house from Louisiana right now. no need to sprinkle them in the mississippi. no need to have someone talk to me about my bio-dad who no one really knew him but me (because i am half him and no one else in the world was half him). no need for ceremony. it took me a year and a half to realize this. a year and a half of guilt.

when all along, i had said goodbye on the beach with my mom right after he left.

his ashes will sit next to syd i guess. i don't know. my bio-dad's flesh and bones and hair and even his hernia in a box?

i told my friend yesterday that i hate life. it's so cruel and arbitrary. and she. her comeback was positive and surprised me but shouldn't have. she told me:

K: don't hate life there is so much to love in life so much
me: thank you. tears...
K: coffee
and music
and colors
and nice fabric
and big hearts
and clear streams
me: nice fabric
K: yeah, like velvet


so i say goodbye to the grandpa. the step-grandpa. bye.





*nailed it. BB's girlfriend looks like the actress who plays Annie Hall in Alvy Singer's (woody allen) play based on real life (the movie Annie Hall). phew. that was a toughie.