time keeps moving, and I’d like to go back for a bit

I said aloud to my mother this week, it has almost been four years since Dad died and it still feels like yesterday. Rarely do I speak of his death, even rarer do I mention it to my mom. Every time my grief is vocalized, it is as if my pressure valve releases. Permission has been granted to feel. How overwhelming that can be. I miss my dad. I feel so sad that time is passing and carrying me further from his physical existence. The existence that was a drive away, a phone call away. I feel sad that my grief is no longer all encompassing like it was. I feel sad that my normal is one without him. I want him to meet my dog and my sister’s boys. Time keeps moving time keeps moving time keeps moving.

I don’t want to go back to right before he died - that was too messy of a time - but I do want to see him again. I’d chose to go to when grandma still lived with him. When we would brave the cold dark winter to go buy driveway salt from Menards. When I would still go in the house because it was clean. When we were all in our own siloed desperations praying things could stay this way forever, dad living with grandma, feeling responsible for her, and me, driving to them often, feeling responsible for them both. We knew, but would never admit, this would never last. Someday grandma would move to assisted living. Someday I would leave to someplace new. Someday he would be left to contend with himself. I would like to go back to the collective avoidance and chosen ignorance. To sit with them in the living room, each in our respective spots. Wheel of Fortune is on. My grandma is telling a story. The house is warm, lived in. There is love amidst all the complications, or maybe, complications amidst all the love.