June 15, 2002
Father�s Day Weekend
I wrote three entries yesterday.. not two line entries but multiple paragraph entries. I wonder if that means I�m feeling lonely. I think it does. This weekend is Father�s Day.. every time I turn on the television I see commercials giving gift idea. The stores are full of cards and special displays. I wish I could go visit my father this weekend. Drive to the little town in California where he�s buried and sit by his grave for hours. Telling him about my life. Asking questions he can�t answer. Leave him flowers and some little token of my love that will be thrown out by the groundskeepers after I leave. I would pack a picnic basket and stay there all day. His is a nice cemetery. It has a quiet dignity to it that cemeteries here in Arizona don�t.
The cemeteries here, at least the newer ones, have many graves covered in tacky fake flowers, ugly grocery store balloons, pictures, stuffed animals and figurines, empty bottles of the deceased�s favorite beer. I know this is a traditional amongst the Mexicans here, and that it helps them deal with the death of one they loved, but I can�t help but frown whenever I see graves like that. I find them distasteful, tacky and low class.. not to mention extremely aseptically unpleasing. Cemeteries are so lovely with their inherent quiet grace.. I can�t help but resent people who ruin that. I think I would lose it if I saw people cluttering up the area where my father rests.. I know it is not him. I know it's just an empty decaying husk that once held his soul, I know this, but it would still infuriate me. Thankfully he�s buried among other military men whose families don�t practice the rites of those here.
My grandfather is buried in Tucson. I could visit him this father�s day, but he�s buried in Holy Hope Catholic Cemetery, surrounded by balloons and beer bottles and pictures. I don�t go to see him very often, though he was like a surrogate father to me when mine died. Ugh.. I need to stop writing and get out of the house for a while.. perhaps I�ll go buy black hair dye.. I�ve decided that blue isn�t my color, so back I go. I�ll give my hair a couple of weeks to recover and then bleach it again and try maroon. I liked it the last time I tried it. *sigh*
10:21 a.m.