Radio Silence

Yesterday I took my final unit test for nursing school. I was originally scheduled to take it over a month ago, but after Dad died I just couldn't do it. I needed to score 38 out of 100 points to pass the semester, but I needed 60 to get a B. Now, normally I score in the mid-80s, but you can totally bomb a nursing test if you're not seriously prepared. Dead Daddy or no dead Daddy, there was no way I was letting a B slip through my fingers this late in the game.

Taking the test couldn't have been a nicer experience. School is out, so I drove over to my teacher's house to take the test. We looked through my pictures from Pinning, and then I took the exam at her kitchen table while her cat kept me company. Afterwards we sat out on her deck and watched the butterflies fly around the pink and yellow bushes. It was the gauzy dream version of what taking a test should be like, and a hell of a lot nicer than taking it in the Nursing office.

Unfortunately, all the butterflies and kittens in the world couldn't make me feel good. I missed my father terribly. My dad is the first person I call after I take a test, and, for the first time, I wasn't able to call him. It was such a loss for me. Dad wasn't exactly a cheery guy, but he loved it when I did well in school. He would have been so excited and proud, and it hurts to not be able to share this with him.

So many changes are coming for me, and it blows my mind that my dad won't be here to see them. In the span of just a few months I will have finished nursing school, lost my father, taken boards, gotten a job, and started a new career. As I live with my parent(s), my dad always knew all of the minutia of my day.

 I can't believe that in so little time we have gone from speaking constantly to a state of total radio silence.

 It feels unfair. I know that "You can always talk to him", but talking to the air is a cold comfort. I feel like we should have a tin-can radio to the afterlife so that we can actually speak to our dead; not a wistful, romanticized  version of what they would say, but an actual link to their opinions and peculiarities. I don't want to hear what I think my dad would say read back to me in my own voice. I want to speak to him. It's very hard knowing that, at least for now, I will not get to do so.