Yep. I'm particularly annoyed when I hear it from professional broadcasters. Happens on NPR all the time, which I find unacceptable.

i feel like not going out of the house, until i get it right. abstracts.
no worries- i will get out of the house.
also called and well, day job is going ahead. dunno when, but probably no sooner than in a month.
so i m feeling like going on a consuming spree - art material and/maybe books.
and cross fingers, they ll gimmie house as last year to go into that sea place. alone. i dont want anyone to visit me. well...for no more than 2 days in a row.

My father passed away in March, after a short battle with cancer. I've been thinking about the grieving process, wondering how I fit into it, because, in short, I don't feel much grief.

I don't think there are any rules about this stuff.

But the fact that you'd even ask is curious. So, you feel guilty you don't feel bad? Do you WISH you felt worse?

Anyway, you'll carry this around forever, and two months is not a long time, so you never know how this'll play out. I just recently started missing my father who died 10 years ago, which was an unexpected change in my previously lukewarm feelings. So as far as I can tell, not caring now doesn't always mean not caring forever.

Good points, evollove. I know it's fresh, early. I see my siblings mourning, feeling sad and nostalgic. I feel nothing like that. One sister keeps asking me about stuff I might want from my father's house, mainly things like old letters I'd written to him, Christmas cards he kept from me, that kind of thing. Maybe it's because I am basically not very sentimental myself, but the stuff means nothing to me.

So maybe I ask because I feel weird that I'm not reacting like them. Sure, a little guilty about it. A little guilty about feeling annoyed to find that they don't see the faults in him that I saw--his pettiness and stinginess, narrow-mindedness. I want to tell my siblings that more than anything, in some ways, my father showed me how NOT to live. He showed me the fallacy of living your life in the past, of being stingy, of being rude to waiters and waitresses and people who served him, including nurses and doctors.

everyone is different. Grieve or do not grieve, at your whim. I lost my father at 17 after 3 years of illness, and two near deaths, and when he finally passed it was more of a weight off my chest and a knowledge that he was not suffering anymore....

Some people do not grieve for years.

Others grieve for years.

that rental car was HOT-BOXIN'/Clam-Bakin'! I am sure he was.

Yep. True. I think also I was prepared. I knew he was dying, I visited him frequently during his illness, and I had visited him frequently over the past few years before his death. He was becoming frailer and frailer with each visit, even before he was sick, and he was quite old, so in a way, I think I was just more prepared than my siblings.

I'm going on very little here, but it very possible that after a few years, you'll feel a lot of pity for the guy. Not the same as mourning, but it's something.

True. And I think I feel some of this already. I am angry at how he chose to live, but I also feel some pity for him, or regret, perhaps, that he could not see a way to live differently. He was SO stubborn. Incredibly stubborn. Even the hospice people told me they had never seen a man so stubborn.

Grief is bizarre how it makes random appearances and affects you in different ways at different times.. but it can be very real. Like love, it is one of the mysteries of the human experiencethat is not easily explained away by neurochemistry or psychology.. its spiritual. Also even animals grieve.. elephants continue to visit the bones of dead family and spend time lingering there. They have even been seen crying.. literally!

gmku- that's an interesting way at looking at grief, actually, talking about his personality... maybe that's just how it manifests in you, wishing he had an ability to change some in life. nothing wrong at all.

uptalk drives me up the wall. so many sorority chicks around here, every damn sentence. and when i have to take their order. "i'll have the... something?" and i can't tell if they really want it or not. it's funny if you're using it in a humorous/ironic way... i guess. some vocal tics/trends i'm a bit more forgiving of than others based on my own speech issues but uptalk, man.

I can somewhat tolerate it out in the mundane world of shopping and casual conversation. Somewhat. At least it fits the inanity of the culture and so on. However, at work!? In serious business conversation!? Absolutely nuts that I hear it there.

Thank you. I see that way, too, I guess. Maybe my grieving process, at least partly, is reviewing how he lived, how he interacted with me and others, and what I can learn, either good or bad, from that.

i think you guys are making too much of this? because it's not that annoying? i mean is it really annoying? maybe? you tell me? i mean the way people talk always changes? am i right? no? yes? i mean when you watch a movie from the 40s? do they talk like we do? i think they speak differently?


ha ha ha ha

I like how things used to be. Don't make me change, dammit. It makes me grumpy.

Uh oh. That sounds a helluvalot like my dad!

wow, i just read your dad posts. dang.

you can't force feeling.

wait, let me do it in the contemporary version of the 80s valley girl.

you can't force feeling? it is what it is??

like yuknoooow whatever?

so grody

True, sir. Part of the problem is, I have one sibling who is rather judgmental about this kind of thing. It probably does not help that I am the fallen-away Catholic in the family, and that I make no pretenses about it. I didn't get up to go to communion at his service, and I got the evil eye, for example.

I hate when relatives get upset when one chooses not to engage in cannibalism for the sake of appeasing the demonic overlords that run the false church of Roman Catholicism...

what if they put some dulce the leche on the host?

would you have eaten it then? i would...? obleas rule?

Rob, you're right to be scared of the Host, vampires and heathens are at risk of eternal fires for not "discerning the Blood and Body of Our Lord" and indeed the priests are there to protect the people from the Chalice, it can be dangerous when ones partake unworthily. As Apostle Paul mentions, "For this reason many of you are sick, and some have even died!"

That's the spirit.

My dad was an Episcopal priest until his passing in 1991, I was an acolyte for 10 years. I know the care taken with the hosts and wine.

Ha ha. My wife, who was not raised Catholic, had a lot to say about her first real Catholic mass experience, my dad's funeral service. "This talk of drinking blood and eating flesh. You don't think that's a bit... weird." Yes, my dear, yes, I do.

It is interesting you said that. I have often thought that people misinterpret the Aztecs and Mayas because of imagery of human sacrifice. I mean, think about this, if the Catholic/Orthodox Church somehow disappeared and was abandoned, and then a few hundred years from now people randomly found some ruins of Catholic Churches and saw the altar, saw the icons, managed to read elements of the Mass, would they not conclude that Christians were cannibals who ritually sacrificed human beings??

In other words, perhaps the Aztecs were symbolic..

You're telling me they're not?!

Umm.. no?

so i read a little on amharic, and yeah, i couldn't handle that for more than a minute

backwards syntax.. No clear expression or word for "no".. strict rules for gender, politeness, AND affection.. as ridiculously colorful and figurative as anything in English.. 256 character alphabet.. several "sounds" that are almost identical but have completely different and confusing meanings..

Yeah, its a lot of fun ;)

how come nobody is interested in obleas... prolly cuz nobody knows them

that's what they're called?! i MISS THESE! i like the raspberry ones but i'd rather have dulce de leche- when i lived in a particularly run down area of little havana (jesus christ, i lived everywhere in that neighborhood) there was this grimy little convenience store that i'm pretty sure was really drug front of sorts because i always saw the same few people in there, but goddamn i loved these things. five to a pack for a dollar, no name on them or anything. i miss the fried dough bits with sugar on top too, whatever those are.

OBLEAS. the mexican ones are filled with cajeta which is from goat milk, but they go south as far as venezuela/colombia.

i'll never complain about english again

makes sense, i was in a particularly venezuelan patch of the neighborhood.

did i mention this dude who lived in miami now lives here and keeps inviting me for starbucks? a) i told him literally "my dad is here all weekend so i'll be hanging with my dad" and he says "well i'm sure we can get lunch in between!" and b)he tried to use his ford taurus as some sort of point to try and seduce me? -sorry for the uptalk but there's no real way to word it via typing that conveys my amazement- the guy literally says "i have a nice ford taurus i can pick you up in"

that's not actual uptalk but some implied clauses no? (did i mention-- he tried)

LOLOLOL ford taurus

get yourself a pitbull. damn, they are expensive to feed. some mace then?