The days have hardly slipped through my fingers: Thursday morning, he died. Saturday, they held the funeral. And today I am back in Boston.

I have no eloquent words. I have no forethought to what I want to write here.

My father's death is finally real to me, now. It took returning to Boston--to a city that is familiar to the workings of my soul to return the edges and lines to the world.

On the platform at the Airport T station, I felt nauseated, and the iron-red burning of tears pressing against my eyes began.

Now, home in my apartment, I feel young and old at the same time. I feel incapable of life, incapable of reaching for anything beyond this minute, these words, this thought.

This thought, just now, is of my head, and the aching that hasn't ceased since Wednesday.

This thought, just now, is that I'm cold--shivering. That I'm afraid.

I don't want to be the strong one--the one who was approached by relatives after the service: Take care of your mother. or Have you considered moving back here? or It's good that you came, or who else could have arranged the funeral?

Or even worse, I don't want to be the evil one, the bad child, the good-for-nothing-who-left, or the one who doesn't feel appropriately. But my mother's words (always my mother's words):

Do you feel that he should be here now?
No.
Don't you miss him?
Of course. Yes.
(but she didn't like my tone of voice when I answered yes)
You'll be sorry one day.
Mother, we all mourn differently. Let me mourn my way.

But her eyes already turned away from me, her thoughts already back to her own grief, but she had left me with another mark of shame scratched straight through the core of me.

I can't do this anymore.

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