life, and days of celebrations

Father's Day just passed. Well, I'm actually sitting here writing the day after Father's Day, but you won't see this for awhile. Father's Day is a loaded holiday for me. This year even more so.

Bunny and I had a busy weekend, and spent both days packing up the old place as we prepare to move in with my mom (for now). Quite an impressive amount of our stuff has moved from one home to the other in the past week. Mostly thanks to Bunny, and my brother-in-law.

But back to Father's Day. It's existence kind of blows, sometimes. My "father" is alive. In fact, last week I slammed a door in his face. As that may signal, we do not have a relationship with each other. He's, well, there are a lot of things I could say about him and most of them would only be a half-truth at best. They would describe how I see him, and who he is around me; there isn't much good to say about that person. He's not always that person though, my brother has a good relationship with him. Having a relationship with him is not healthy for me, so I don't. I get a lot of grief from my extended family over that fact.

So Father's Day always brings up some unpleasant emotions and thoughts. I'm always uncomfortable with the day, and I always wish that my life were that little bit different. This Father's Day was different.

It was the first Father's Day without Bunny's father. Without my surrogate father. The last time I saw him, really saw him (I don't quite count the hospital, somehow) was on Mother's Day. I pulled the sock off his foot when we left, which drove him nuts. (It also drives Bunny and my brother nuts when I do it. Strangely, people don't like having a single sock removed.) The best way to show Bunny's father that you loved him was to give him a hard time. He'd respect you more for it, too.

Father's Day, this year, also fell exactly on the one-month anniversary of his death. There was a lot of potential for that day to go very badly, emotionally, for either Bunny or myself. Most of the day I was pretty tense, just waiting and watching Bunny, fully prepared for it to be pretty rough.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been. Mostly I just told Bunny I love him, a lot. We crawled into bed early and snuggled up watching TV. I put down my cross stitch so we could snuggle more.

I felt a little guilty. That I could see my father, if I really wanted to, and choose not to while Bunny can't have his. Then I let it go. Because they are two very different situations, two very different relationships. My (lack of a) relationship with my father is completely separate from Bunny's relationship with his father, and his father's death. One says nothing about the other, has no impact on the other.

It was an odd day. It felt like it should have gone a lot worse, but that's not a complaint. We're just stumbling on through, and we'll continue to do so.