!Empower!

Surreal beyond my belief. That's the only way to describe the past two days of my life, and my 26th Birthday. After about two and a half hours of sleep, mom and I spoke about Dad, I wrote my blog entry for yesterday. After we went to hear mass at 8:30. It was definitely a feeling I had never experienced before, going to church to celebrate my birthday, but at the same time still dealing with the loss of Dad just a couple hours before.

After, we ate breakfast with some family, and it went back and forth between discussing memories of dad, filled with pockets of introspective silence by all. From breakfast we went straight to the mortuary to get ready to set the arrangements for Dad. This was one of the things I was so afraid of doing, as it's something you think about but don't actually really think about deeply because you would never want to unless the circumstance called for it. And i know Dad was watching over me, cause as soon as I got out of the car, I felt an energy and the for some reason the warmth of the sun and i just sensed dad, and a peacefulness overcame me. We went in for a couple hours and went over everything from tedious paperwork, to floral arrangements, to the picking a casket in a showroom(that was weird, but i guess someones gotta sell coffins), and to looking at plots. The whole time we had out this one picture of Dad that just captures him in his essence flashing his million dollar smile with his trademark thumbs up, and it such a powerful picture, that evokes emotions whenever i look at it, and that picture gave me everything i needed to get through the day.

After everything we came home and started of first day of nine, where we all gather and pray for Dad, and the turnout was pretty amazing for being so short notice. We had about 40 people come and to just have all the love for Dad in the house, made me proud to be his son, and made it feel as if he was around.

After prayers, I took a nap for a bout an hour and caught up on rest. Then the boys texted me and told me that they had something for me for my Bday. At around eleven my fam told me to go and celebrate the last hour of my bday, and it was the perfect lowkey, but meaningful celebration for me, as I got to just chill like a kid. I got to BC and Beej's pad and there was BC, Beej, Pep, Errol, Big Kat, Diane, and Camacho, greeting me with a birthday cake with some special 69 candles, Ray Riggs in icing, with the S fashioned like stussy. Talk about a money ass cake. Also with me not being the biggest fan of drinking, but the biggest fan of all things icy, they got me shots, not alcohol, but the ice cream, "Shots". So i went ahead and turned into a party monster and down a couple double shots. The final complement to the meal was the wonderfully crispy taquitos prepared by Big Kat. But by far the most fun and most mind easing thing i did all night and have done in the past turbulent days, was the bike racing we did around the block. We all timed ourselves as we biked around the block twice trying to get the fastest time. Anyhow, on the last ride I got the fastest time which puit me in a world of hurt, but then the guys made my birthday. They hyped up my meaningless ride for fun, calling it "Record Breaking" and letting me dedicate it to my Dad. It was something small, but it did more than those guys know for me. They let me be a kid doing somehting I really wanted to and they accepted me for it, and even found a way to include Dad in it. And for that I am thankful, and blessed, and shared the most memorable Bday of my life.