1.
Today is a birthday. It’s not my own, but it may as well be because I always cry on my own birthday anyway.
You’re looking for excuses not to go? Why? Can you not even pay penance to her on her own birthday? If you don’t go it will eat at you, yet another thing to place on the ever-filling plate of guilt that you keep at your bedside table, to mull over while you sleep.
But what happens when I do go? I make myself feel better, I pay homage to a piece of rock. It’s meaningless. Still, the thought of that headstone, alone out there in the cold with the grey clouds gathering – it does not leave me feeling neutral, no.
Selfish reasons then, to go or not to go. Not going would mean I could miss out on the silent thirty minute ride that is sure to occur whenever my father and I are in the car alone. He has nothing to say to me, or bites his tongue if he does.
I won’t go. I’ll light a candle by the mini-shrine I made for her, that is her home for now. He can make his peace there, I will make mine here. It will do for now.
Okay, that was the conversation that took place inside my head. It didn’t end up happening like that though; a force greater than myself seemed to push me out of my room and into the awkward confines of the metal box that would take us to our destination. I had to do it, regardless of why I was doing it.
It’s someone else’s birthday, anyway, you do things for that person not to make yourself happy.
It’s been a long time and the nights ain’t getting any shorter. Miss you.
