my brother just told me it was seven years ago today my dad died.

i think of him a lot, but time is strange after death, and i don't remember birthdays or deathdays. it's like we're doing time until our time comes and we die and become like the ones who are no longer doing time. so i don't count time, or remember dates, i'm practicing being out of time.

when i think of dad it's in relation to me. i can't imagine him. i can't imagine what it was like to be him, though i feared being him. he just doesn't exist now. he's here in my mind. i think about what he would think of me now, writing about his death and his presence in my mind, in the diary he scoffed at. i think about if given more time he ever would have come to know me, or i him.

i think we would still be unknown to each other. i think we will always be unknown.

 
 r. said, i hope he's at peace on his journey.

i said, i doubt it. but then i thought better. i thought, i said, i hope so too. the afterlife should be peace.

and if his afterlife is me, it is more peaceful than his life, at least in me. i can't say that is his journey. if it is through the passage of cells, are they only flesh, or can they be other material, say, pixels, or wood, or collage. i think about what passes on. 

but i'm not alone now. i think thinking about dad was harder when i was alone. and he was always gone, he was never there. even when he claimed the space, and wanted to be. 

i'll miss him more than dad. i never had dad, whereas mister always filled me with his spirit. dad was always eluding me.

here's a little tree to celebrate dad. i dedicated the old oak on wooded island to him, but it was more a romantic notion going back to the lone oak tavern where he used to take us to celebrate after our humiliating haircuts, to bask in the beer light and play shuffleboard. this tree is more what i feel.

 this is not the end of dad. dad is a tenacious idea, like a tree.