A month today, do you realise that?

A month, the oddest, quickest month of my life.

This has, in general, been the oddest year of my life.

It will be odder still to see it end. Because how can the only real thing to contain such events go? How can time that saw so much just vanish?

How, I suppose I want to ask, can time go on when my father does not?

James Baldwin once wrote, "He was reduced to his beauty and his elegance, as bones, in sickness, come forwards through the flesh." (It is from Another Country. He is describing the appearance of Vivaldo at Rufus' funeral. But the words are still the same.) This is what has happened; my father has been reduced to his politics and his smile and his brilliance, and we have forgotten all that he did wrong. No; this is not completely true. I keep thinking of what he did to Jenny, his ex-wife, what he did to his mother, and I keep thinking of all the mistakes he made, and of all he was wrong about, and everything I never liked about him. But I try not to, because I cannot see his smile, and it cannot be all better.

I dreamed of him the other night. We visited him in hospital, my mother and I. And he was dead, eyes open. And he awoke, and told me there was a letter in his left eyelid before collapsing once again.

This is also the worst time for me to be reading Frankenstein. Because he has a point: why can't we simply bring people back to life? Why can't we replace whatever was wrong, and start the blood pumping once again? Where is the immorality, exactly, in life?

This is turning into a long post- sorry.

I feel as if all this mourning, all this crying, should be over, or at least subsiding. A month isn't long, but it doesn't seem to matter to anyone any more. It's called puddlejumping, what I'm doing, or that's what Winston's Wish calls it, to five-year-olds. Still, I can't find a better name for it. Puddlejumping. Puddles of grief. Good days, and bad days, good hours and bad hours, being fine one minute and collapsing the next.

Michael's parents committed suicide when he was about my age.

So, Merry Chirstmas, one and all.

Bit late, I realise, but I was terrified of looking really, really, really, nerdy if I blogged on Christmas day. But Sophia's blogged now and because she's quite obviously not a nerd whatsoever (...), it must be fine for we who subscribe to the New Scientist to blog, too.

Anyway: good Christmas this year, eating at my grandmother's. She lives maybe fifteen minutes away, so I still got to watch Kylie make a fool of herself, while Sean pretended to be scared of all the wrong bits. Still can't quite belive he was called Alonso...

Anyway, again: Christmas was much less odd than I thougt it'd be. We've never had many traditions, our family. Every year as been different from the last. You know, what with me being either at my fater's or mother's, with Michael only coming into the picture when I was six, and Trina or Gina or Sally or OtherEmily or any of the other Australians (wow, there were so many!) might have been at my father's house, or we might have gone away with various people to Australia or Norwich, and Sean might have been born, and then my father got ill. And now he's dead.

So Christmas is always different, which may have helped. I was really worried that I'd be thinking about him all day.

But, no, it was good.

I hope all of you readers (all maybe three of you...) had a wonderful day, whether or not you celebrate it, and years that are better than the last.

So, yeah, I went to see Patrick Wolf yesterday.

I absolutely wouldn't be blogging this, but:

He played some of the new songs, and by Jove! One recommends revolution! Killing the king! Sadly, however, it does not seem to be a socialist revolution, never mind a communist one, as he tells us we should "crown our witches". So, alas, it seems that it is more of a revolutionary situation than a revolution that he advocates.

So, that was defiantly a good day, and a fun concert. Sean can now say "Patrick Wolf", too. So.

What else?

Holidays! Hurrah! I have absolutely nothing to say about them, but yes, they are here, and that is good.

Sophia is here, and she says: "Okay. Um, I say: you should worship the Christmas tree".

I have absolutely no idea why she, however, says this, so it may be disregarded.

Several things have happened today, so I am torn. Do I tell you about my high score of a million in some tennis game thing I've been playing for months? Or should I instead concentrate on the flash version of Portal I found, which would mean I wouldn't have to talk to Joel, if it only had a better physics engine? Do I decide to just talk about Brutal Legend for a few pages? Or do I steer out of the gaming realm and decide to just write: Patrick Wolf on Thursday! and then run away? Perhaps I should mention crocheting, Alice, or Shiven?

Fuck, I haven't a clue. (That would be a much better radio show.) (No, really. (Not sure what it would be, but when did the addition of a the word "fuck" decrease from the title of a popular, if remarkably sexist, radio four program?)(excluding when it made it more sexist, since it doesn't in this context.))

What's odd about this whole thing is that I feel like I don't have enough room to think about it all. I don't know what I mean by that. But I feel as if I have so, so much to do, as if mourning is a chore that I haven't gotten around to doing yet. I feel like I'm too busy with mourning to live, and too busy living to mourn. So I basically end up doing neither.

I haven't really been thinking about him much. I feel a little guilty about this, but then I remember that I'm not meant to feel guilty, and I start feeling guilty about being guilty, instead. Right now, I'm not mourning for my father. I'm mourning for his house, for his cooking, for the idea of having a dad. Mourning for what my life used to be like. I can't think about him. Not really, not in any way but the most abstract. I am thinking not about him, but about what people said about him.

Jesus, I really should blog about something else, soon...

I just got back from the funeral. My father's funeral. Jesus- I still can't quite believe it.

Sanna talked about how detaching and alienating her grandmother's funeral was. How small it was. My father's funeral was the opposite.

The crematorium could take one hundred and sixty people, and there were more than that. Martin Smith, one of the most respected members of the SWP did the introductions. Sally (not the Australian one), Dave Sellers, my mother, and two others I've forgotten talked. We sung the Internationale, and Mr. Jones played as we walked in.

Emily and Dominic and Amber and Sophia all came, even thought they barely knew him; they were all so brilliant. I didn't realise how much I wanted them there until I asked them and realised quite how relived I felt.

The reception filled the pub's three rooms, and was a beautiful crowded mess of alcohol, politics and memory. People who had never been in the same room before, but who had all known my dad were finally brought together.

Do you realise that he only spoke to his mother once in my lifetime, and that was when she visited him in hospital? Do you realise how much he seemed to hate her, although it was obvious she had done nothing to provoke it?

But then, she knew Fionntan. I knew Kelly. Everyone but his family knew Kelly.

But.

It was odd seeing Andrew and OtherRobert and Liam (!) and Charlotte and Ira and everyone, almost everyone I've ever known together. Why is it only death that does this?

I could write a post a mile long, but I'll stop here.

Yesterday, I chose a font to sum up my father and his life.

Today I packed half my life and all of my father's, and put them into boxes.

Today I saw my home for the last time.

It strikes me now how much my father hoarded. I have in a box, junk, the meaningless mixed with the poignant. Receipts and letters and tickets, and nothing, all sitting in a box. And how much of our lives are items? Why does it hurt so much to take those receipts and throw them away? Even when the ink is faded, and I have no idea what was bought, never mind what they meant, it hurts. I suppose I want them to be meaningful. That way there's a little bit more to remember.

My father is gone, and I have to understand this. There is nothing left of him other than half my chromosomes, his signature, a memory, and the sweat on his pillow (which I have, next to me). There may be six billion people alive, but not one of them is him.

Less than a week to his funeral now. I want to go back to school on Monday.

My father died on the twenty-ninth of November, around nine o' clock.

The hospital rang about nine fifteen. E4 music was on; the song Rebellion by Arcade Fire. My grandmother was bathing my brother.

We spent the day ringing people. My mother came home, as did Michael. Rosie, my aunt, came over from work.

Everyone has been so wonderful; I've gotten dozens of emails and phone calls, and every one has made me smile. Emily has been particularly wonderful, telling people at school and my other friends. My form class made a card. It's brilliant.

We're going to his house today, to pick up a few little things. The funeral's going to be on the fourteenth.

I'd like to give a mention to Sanna. It's been a bad week, I think, all round.