September 11th

So yesterday was a bit rough for me.  It was both  the eleventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York (where I lived at the time) and it was the day I had to go pick up my Dad's ashes from the Neptune Society. 

I couldn't get out of bed on Monday, just thinking about it.  And I couldn't figure out why I felt so unmotivated.  Of course my lack of motivation made me feel like a loser.  I have this time to write where I'm not going into an office and I'm WASTING it.  That's the thought that went through my mind.  I did everything else though: gym, dance class, eating, grocery shopping, doing laundry, doing dishes, masturbating, etc.

I watched THE VOICE on NBC and was crying buckets. 

Then I woke up early on Tuesday and tried to get some work done.  No dice.  Then I made the long trek from Burbank to San Pedro.  Grey skies.  My mood was getting darker as the sky darkened.  I drove to the Neptune Society office, told them who I was there to pick up, waited in an office for ten minutes, the woman came back out with a purple tote bag and a box with my Dad's remains in them.  I thanked her and then slipped out the door and drove off. 

Was this a drug drop off?

I had him.  Everything he was to my physically was now gone.  I thought about the bible quote about us being ashes and returning to ashes.  I thought about the twin towers and how they burned to ashes along with the people who burned to ashes that day.  I thought of the smell of burning that went through my neighborhood in Park Slope that day and for many days afterward.  I thought about two events that changed me forever. 

I never cried on September 11th, but the anniversaries of that event make me cry every year.  It's the same thing with my Dad.  I didn't cry the day he died.  But I've had many moments in the seven weeks since where I've cried alone. 

Just like the ashes from the Towers signaled the end of the person I was before September 11th, 2001...the ashes of my Father signal the end of the person I was before July 23, 2012.  I embrace the difference and I walk in that difference.  I don't want to be that person I was before because that person was gone.  Just like the person I was before November 1, 2010.

And like a Phoenix (my favorite character in the Marvel Universe, btw)...I will rise from those ashes.