A Hole In The World.

(My family is going through something very profound and my father asked me to try and put something on paper, he has asked the use of my words for his grief so I am going to attempt to put my observations of pain into words.)

On Monday I saw my dad in a new light. He wasn't my dad that day, he was a man weeping over the casket of the love of his life. This is a man that served his country, shed blood, sweat and tears for the red white and blue broken by the lose of a woman that gave him purpose. This is a man who shouldered more tragedy in his life that I could possibly begin to understand and did it with a stiff lip, and when his love was taken from this world he openly wept at the reality of this, the greatest of his losses.

He has dwelt in the solace of the two pups turned children, Princess and Adorellba who have taken to cleaning his face of his tears of loss. He stands strong, like he always has, by the love he has for my mother. The matriarch of that love is gone but that hasn't changed the crippling reality of that love.

I have seen my dad literally kiss my mother's feet, I have seen them rub each others shoulders, steal kisses in the kitchen and playfully poke fun at each other. He has shouldered an imaginary burden of responsibility, tortured over what would have been if he hadn't gone to work like he always did, if by some freak of nature he could have possibly anticipated the nightmare we are now living through.

For a man dedicated to the protection of his family it is a back breaking thought to harbor. I know that no matter how many days pass he will always sense some kind of imaginary fault for what happened. The true tragedy is that what me and my father need is for Phyllis Walter to hold us both and tell us there was nothing we could do.This house has sheltered a singular family. We had a dynamic all our own that only the people under this roof can really understand, and now that dynamic has changed forever.

Both my father and I shuffle through this house of memories, memories of a protective mother, of a kind lover, of a woman that lived in strength. We walk in this house falling apart at the seems, having been robbed of the glue that kept us sane. This house, our hearts, our mannerisms, they all scream her name.

Broken is the only word that can be used to describe the man who took the job of my father when no one else wanted it. When the practicalities, the paper work is all done, all the T's are crossed and I's are dotted we are still left with a hole in our world.We are all we have now, and if a man has two options, to fight, or flight, than the former is the one we are choosing. We could let this drive a wedge, let ourselves drift from one another but mom's love wasn't the kind that lent it's self to weakness.

She made us strong, she made us brave and now that she is gone that is all we have left. Memories, courage and each other.