Randomness

Sadly, I spent the first three days of the week at home wearing the same pajamas.

What can I say? I work from home. And I was leading online classes all week long, starting at 8:00 am each day. And have I mentioned that I’m not a morning person?

So yeah … <blushing>

However yesterday, with no classes scheduled to teach, I clamored out the door at 7:00 am (and yes, I changed clothes!) just so I could have some breakfast with Hubby before he headed into work. How’s that possible, seeing that I had only climbed into bed less than four hours prior to then? Methinks I just needed some motivation to get out of my jammies.

Anyhoo … my agenda for the day included completing paperwork for work and laundry. So — thanks to a broken dryer — off to Mom’s house I went.

Ever since my Dad passed away, I’m never sure what to expect when I go back to my childhood home. I’m not sure if I’ll be fine to do the task at hand, whether it’s laundry or teaching Mom how to download pictures to iPhoto and upload them to Facebook. (Which — when I think of that last part — was probably not a good idea.) Or if I’ll stumble upon something that will remind me of my Dad and turn me into an emotional wreck … even if it was for just a few minutes.

Yesterday’s trip home was the latter. Mom had gone out for a previously scheduled lunch engagement and had left me with instructions to watch the latest Oprah show. The purpose of doing so was to get a specific code in order to win a chance to see one of the last Oprah shows in Chicago. Now … I might have sat down at 4 pm EST to watch the entire show (after all, Johnny Depp was scheduled to be on … sigh!), except I still had lots of paperwork to do. So instead I decided to record it on her DVR and then show her how to access it later.

Yeah … I knew this was one more technological thing I would have to teach her. But hey, better to show her now so she could use that function more in the future. After all, better to teach a (wo)man to fish … right? What I didn’t expect was that there would already be saved shows on the DVR.  Ones that my Dad had apparently recorded.

For that split second … the second it took me to realize that there was nothing recorded since the end of November … my heart shattered into yet another million pieces. And the waterworks began.

But just as quick as the moment happened, it passed just as swiftly. And, as it had during similar moments in the past five months, it left me with this haunted empty feeling.

I try to reason with myself when these incidents happen. I tell myself that it’s only been five months and I should give myself a little slack. And since Dad passed away so unexpectedly, there will be those “surprise” moments where we’ll stumble upon something totally unexpected. After all, this first year is supposed to be the hardest.

But G*d … do I miss him. I miss his silly random phone calls. I miss calling him and talking about Red Wings playoff games. Or Michigan Football games. I miss seeing him in his recliner, either asleep or watching Filipino Soap Operas whenever I head back home. And somehow I suspect that that feeling will never ever go away.