Well, I’ve been putting off writing about it but I think it’s time. My father died last month, June 17th. I can feel a bubbling cauldron of emotions below the surface, and I know that from time to time when they bubble out it’s hard to keep a reign on them. I also know that it’s natural to feel like this. I was thankful to be at home for a couple weeks, and to see him before he died. He also got to see my son (his first grandson) for the first time.

Afterwards there were so many little things, and sometimes the strangest or silliest things would bring one of us to tears. We were making a list of all the things that we were going to miss about him. My sister Anna was asking everyone and when she looked up and asked me “What are you going to miss most about Dad?” the only thing I could answer was.

“Him being here.”

And after a moment of silence everyone threw things at me, tears welling up anew. And my brother, standing outside trying to get the pool into working order and crying to my mom, saying “There’s so much I don’t know, and now there’s no-one to ask.”

Time moves, and life goes on, but I don’t know that it will get any easier.

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I’m at Javaone right now in a concurrency session, and I have so much stuff that I want to talk about after this past month but I have Javaone all this week, then I’m in san diego until the 6th. I might update a bit, but nothing serious. An exerpt:
Today i participated in a coding challenge and came in 6th.. weak. I mean, most people would say “Wow, 6th out of a couple hundred or thousand is good right?” Wrong. No prizes after 4th place. Weak.

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I saw the best minds of my generation, destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

with thanks to allen ginsberg.

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My dad is dying. He has been diagnosed with cancer for the third time, and it’s metastasized through his body. The doctors don’t know how much longer he has, probably 6-9 months. We’re going home to see him in a few weeks. I’m a little bit numb. I went through the whole range of emotions the last time that he was diagnosed, thinking that that was the end, but to hear it and have it be so final, and so immediate… I feel terrible, there’s a knot in my stomach that won’t go away.

I have been trying to get him to tell me the story of his life, learn all there is about him, who he was, who he is, and all the things that have gone before he got married at age 40. He’s 70 now, and has struggled pretty hard the last few years against cancer, retirement, boredom, health issues…

And I still don’t really know him.

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Well, a ton of stuff happened, it’s wednesday already and I’m just now getting to my weekend wrapup.. had a nice BBQ on monday, friends came over and we hung out, Kelly sprained her ankle, and a good time was had by most.

Yesterday I found out my dad is back in the hospital, his lungs are filling up with fluid and the doctor’s don’t know why.

And Kelly’s Grandma had a stroke.

My Car’s in the shop, a shitload of stuff is wrong, leaking coolant at the intake manifold, serpentine belt needs to be replaced, a ton of little stuff, needs a new battery blah blah blah.

I also remembered what FP stands for (finally) but I’m going to hold off and write about it later.

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