Publisher’s Clearing House does knock on the door before calling, right?

I’m a raging hypocrite at times, and it hasn’t taken me years of therapy to figure this out. It’s a no brainer. I talk over my mother while pleading with her to listen to me. I want you to allow me my neediness but I abhor it in you. I simply cannot stand avoidance in other people. Man up, I think. Make the call, support the friend, face up to what’s eating at you and let’s get this show on the road. Got an issue? Tackle the damn thing. Talk it out, sweat it out, drink through it, whatever it takes to feel it and move on to greener pastures. After an extended stay with self-pity, likely involving a large delivered pizza that I swear I’ll freeze the rest of, I like to think that I get in motion. Not cured, and as is evidenced by archives resplendent with tales of highwayside crying, but moving forward nonetheless.

Not right now.

I don’t want to talk about it. I so don’t want to face this, this situation, that it took a bottle of Cab Sauvignon for me to check the 19 new cell messages I’d been sitting on for the week after my father died. There are a dozen or so on there right now and I don’t want to listen to a single one. Truthfully, of what real importance can they be? Gone are the days of the scattered phone calls from Mom, the question marks around my travel given my father’s condition. These new calls can wait. As can the cards. I’ve opened about five, and the remaining ones are kept as far away from me as is physically possible, on the windowsill in the foyer. I can see them from my vantage point on the couch, much like the bills from Pepco and Comcast, but I see no need to open them right now. I’m just keeping things steady. Ask my closest. I tell them I’m fine – more about them is better. Maybe I can do something tonight; I’m just a little bit tired.

I don’t want to face this head on. What I want to do is fall asleep while watching delightfully bad television, while Simon berates some fool who should have known better and Paula claps her Labrador puppy-sized man hands. And when I’m awake, I want to drink wine and pore over buckets of old photographs while listening to Bridge over Troubled Water on repeat. As much as I want to remain numb right now, it’s like I want to soak in him. It’s why I frantically record memories of us in Blackberry memos before I forget them. As if immersing myself in the living part of my father will allow me to stave off the inevitable.

He isn’t here.

I know rationally that this masterful avoidance will not bring him back, that I will open those dreaded envelopes and with them the floodgates. But it sure keeps me from spilling out of the thin coating I’ve managed to wrap myself in for two weeks and counting.