Life keeps moving on

Thanks to everyone who left me condolence notes! It was really sweet and touching. I am doing ok as ok is? Which is sad and angry, and other wise being my normal self.  Yesterday was my first day back at work; it feels really odd and not quite real that it’s been exactly a week since my father passed away. I have pretty much had visits from my friends just about every day; my mom has been really touched by how they have all kind of collected around us so aggressively. Every one has been very ardent in wanting us to know how loved and cared for we are and wont take no for answer.

We've had a lot of stuff going on; we've been both emailing and replying to dad’s network of friends. He was a really respected and well known guy in the custom bicycle world so I've been in charge of getting and replying to all their very nice letters. They've been telling me how my dad was such an inspiration and a hero to a lot of the younger bike guys. He had been running an online bike zine devoted to custom bikes for like over 10 years, it was pretty much is other child. I've been working on a tribute to him to try to update his site with; he built the damn thing in the worst kind of java script based builder so it’s kind of annoying as hell. But I will succeed damn it.

We set a memorial/wake/party at the end of the month after by birthday, mostly to give us more time to work on stuff. We are going to fly out to Kentucky to bury his ashes in April when mom gets a work spring break, his siblings and maybe a couple of my mom’s relatives will join us. We aren’t really a traditional family who does stuff like normal families so we kind of figured why should we start now? My uncle on my dads side is flying in for the memorial. I am looking forward to that, he is my fave relative and it will be nice for him to meet all my friends. We havent seen each other in years.

One really nice thing aside from the overwhelming support is that mom’s coworkers all contributed money for the funeral, they raised amazingly generous amount, and since we aren’t doing a traditional funeral home ceremony most of the costs are covered. We could have afforded it any way, but it’s still amazing and moving. I think its more of a reflection on me and my mom since most of these people never met dad, but I honestly feel better about people after all of this. Some of my regular customers signed the card that my coworkers got to give to me for my return to work. And over all work were super chill and a nice distraction.

With our five days off on mourning leave we started cleaning the apartment, since we plan on making some big changes so that the place doesn’t become one big hoarder shrine to dad. I am going to get a proper drafting table for the studio and mom is going to get a proper desk. Once we finish clearing and hauling out dads work table and desk. Which were pretty trashed and ghetto honestly. Early spring cleaning I guess. This has also pretty much RUINED MY DREAMS OF MOVING OUT THIS YEAR. I can't move out and leave my mom alone; she wouldn’t be handling this as well as she has been if she didn’t have me to keep her company and from getting lonely.

I am going to be ok, slowly but surely. My family was always really fucked up so honestly, we were prepared for this I guess. Just didnt think it would be so fast or so soon.