(i saw the sun today)

I saw the sun today as it slipped through the clouds. The straight, steely shafts melted as the curtains closed again. At least that's how I felt.

Sometimes seeing the sun – just for a moment – is enough. Today it wasn't. I know she means well, as they say. Just reminding me that I have to wake up at some point and that I might even want to go outside today, since I didn't yesterday.

She's just trying to help.

She just didn't know that I remembered him again.

The Good Dr. says I shouldn't talk about it quite that way. I can't help it. It's not that other thing. That word – dream? It’s not right.

Last Saturday I told The Good Dr. my theory. I have a few, really, but this was the theory of shared dreams. First, I told him, let's agree that dreams rank somewhere above vacation slide shows and below Midwestern ballet on the Lifetime Boredom Scale. Second, let's agree that dreams are personal. Agreed?

So, my theory of dreams – and the reason I remembered him – is that we cannot share dreams. They are unitary and boring and impossible to share.

This, I can share.

I last saw him – and always remember him – on the far side of my parent’s house. He wore the uniform of a man his age – a simple white dress shirt, long sleeves unbuttoned and starting to roll up. The thin material was hardly enough to hide an old a-shirt underneath. In his chest pocket, the free glasses case he'd used all his adult life and behind that, the bulge of Redman chewing tobacco.

His pants, as always, were a simple khaki. For some reason I can remember the belt – black leather – but have no idea what kind of shoes he wore. Granted, for church, he wore zip-up, high-top leather boots. But, today, a Saturday, I don't know. I can never remember the shoes.

I still don't know what he was doing there by the shed, under the kudzu-covered oaks and pines. I always remember him there – or hunched over the beige Ford sedan parked in our driveway, tinkering again.

That’s where I stop.

The sun interrupted me again. It does that here in Ohio, in early winter.

Half a life ago, the sun started this damned interrupting. It rained all day. From the moment I left for the funeral home to the family-only interring, it rained. Then, just as we left, the sun reminded me it was there above the clouds. God's fingers, they call it. Then the rain, again.

Before the sun interrupted, I was remembering what he (The Not-So-Good Dr.) told us right before he (not The Not-So-Good Dr.) really died. There had been false alarms that week. This was, well, what would you call it? The real alarm.

He passed, he said.

Outside, before it all disappeared, I saw azure skies and rippled clouds framed by the afternoon sun.

What?

He passed.

And I doubled over.

I became my own storm cloud.

Thundering fists.

Driving tears.

Howling sobs.

I was a tempest, littering the waiting room floor with a day's worth of useless tissues.

I hated every goddamn glimpse because he couldn't see it, too.

Have you ever felt such bone-shattering loss? And known that slow march was for you, all for you?

Now, half a life later, I'm remembering him for the last time. No more interruptions, Mr. Golden Sun. Tomorrow, it's her turn to remember me.