Posts by John Blase

My saddest day up to this point in life is the day my dad died. I’ll never recover. People have told me to hang on, that the pain eases with time. Here, almost a year from that day, the sorrow is deeper, trickier. I sense a lot of people spin flowery webs out of their…

Maybe the little drummer boy showed up because he was all that was left of all the other kings’ horses and men. All the rest killed in all the other wars kings drool over. Maybe he arrived not so much to worship as to gauge authority, to divine if this was simply another college try…

I bought a costly German watch last year, the year my father died. I told myself it was to mark time—a way to remember before, and now to live after. He would have never purchased something like that for himself. But he did dream of such beautiful things. I know this because I am my…

  Reinvent your life because you must. The annunciation from that halo-broke Bukowski has been barked at me for weeks now and while I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer I’ve grown to know when a message is earmarked for me. My son gave me a rich robe for Christmas saying, I’ve never seen…

The dam engineers have lowered the lake. This annual event allows winter’s frigid temps to strike dangerous shoreline vegetation where it hurts most—at their nuisance roots. (Nuisance from the Latin nocere – “to harm”) The lake dropping five feet is a can’t-miss as anybody with one eye and horse sense knows. When the lowering is…

Strange, these after-your-father-dies days when too-tired-for-life you wonder if you ever really believed in God or just believed in Dad. Lately, for me, I’ve leaned toward the latter. John Dunne’s (the other one) fierce novel Dutch Shea, Jr. concludes with this credo: “I believe in Cat. I believe in God.” Dutch’s daughter, Cat—killed by an…

A few of my parents’ friends kept scanners in their homes. Sleek black boxes on a shelf with a row of red lights chasing one another. While my parents and their friends visited, I’d sit and watch the lights, a slow-town boy itching for something sensational to halt them. An eighteen-wheeler lost its load, cattle…

My father who is in heaven, I sure do miss you like hell. I’ve got friends who pray to Mary the mother of God. You were a close friend of God, one of the true-bluest I knew, so I’m betting if it works with Mary then it’s got to work with you too. Yes, you…

I just told her I want to run away— maybe to Buena Vista (we’ve spent sweet summers there) or Golden and sprawl beside Clear Creek to watch the sun set long and languid, anywhere really in driving distance to steal away from thinking about dying and moving and starting this life over at 54yrs which…

Dad, I was going to text you this morning something, something I wanted to tell you. But then I remembered you’re not here any longer, and my great sadness stirred. Its two months today that we saw your face through our phones and you were all thumbs up we’re gonna give this intubation a go…