I am getting ready to do something kind of momentous, at least for me. I am going to let go of my dad’s comic book collection. I inherited 44k comics when my father passed and have been holding onto them for almost 10 years. This has been kind of an issue with my house since they literally fill a room from top to bottom. My house doesn’t have that much space. But while I might be gaining space, I fear I might be losing a link to my father. See when I was growing up there were a lot of times that I struggled with making connections with my family and my dad. I grew up in a large family (9 of us) but I was separated by five years from my closest sibling and there were a lot of activities that I was never included in. Also, while I was growing up a lot of the things my father was interested in were of no importance to me, like sports. I was probably to blame for that lack of connection to, undiagnosed neurodivergence can appear to the outside like whining, spoiled brat baby of the family, hell some of my family members still perceive me that way when talking amongst themselves.
The thing we did have was comics. I have a lot of memories of comics. I remember when we moved from New York to Cleveland, and I got a copy of the living mummy issue number 9 to keep me occupied during the flight. I remember going to newsstands and hoping they would have the next issue of x-men because in the days before comic stores it was never a guarantee what issues might be there month from month. I remember finding out first “Comic bookstore’. I remember the first times we bought bags and boards or a paper sheet to keep track of what issues we had. I remember going down to catalog the back issues and getting lost in reading like 100 issues of Avengers (sorry dad). I remember the rules, no comics in the bathroom, no bending the covers backward cuz that hurts the spine of the books and the most important one, no reading the comics until my dad had read them first. Most of all I remember that while we might have liked different characters, we always felt conformable sitting on the couch reading comics next to each other no matter what else might be going on. I have heard a lot of other people talk about this phenomenon in regard to football or baseball with their dads. For me and my dad it was comics. Sometimes I wonder if that would still have worked after I came out. Not sure, probably not.
Anyway, he passed almost 10 years ago in what could only be called the most drawn-out sudden death I could conceive of. He was doing fine and dandy and then fell on his icy driveway, he went down causing brain damage. He held on for 3 months, most of which was spent in an almost comatose condition until he moved on. So, the worst parts of the unexpected accident and long lingering goodbye. After he passed, I inherited the comics, all 240 boxes of them. I would have loved to have them but unlike my father who had a basement full of filing cabinets he could keep them in and access them I had to stick them in a room in the back with no way to read or enjoy them. There were also members of the family who, while they did not want any of the comics, were always quick to tell me what needed to be done with them. But after all this time I unfortunately have concluded that I will never be getting a bigger house. There will never be a time I can at my leisure pull out the back issues and read them fun and remember my dad. So, it’s time to sell them. Which I still feel guilty about. I feel like I am letting one of the last pieces of my dad’s spirit float away. Even after 10 years I still miss him, and the pain seemed to get even more acute when my brother passed away as well last year, like as the youngest all I have to look forward to is saying goodbye to people I love.
I know this is not the usual stuff I post but I had to get it out and I have always been better at putting things on the page instead of using my voice. Hope to get back to reviews and interviews soon.