When I get down about all this, I've found that it makes me feel better to listen to Jeff Buckley and Iron & Wine.

I know they're supposed to be about more of a lover's melancholy, but to some extent I guess melancholy is melancholy.

I don't even know what to do any more. When I talked to my older cousin at the visitation, he told me that the best thing I could do to come to terms with what happened is to make my life a testament to my dad's - to daily build a legacy to him by living in a way that would have made him proud. I decided I really wanted to do that. It was a good resolution, and I felt - and continue to feel - good about it, but now that I have left the comforting fold of a mourning family to try to implement it... well, it's not what I thought it would be.

I guess I assumed that, while I was on this mission to live a life that would make people say, "Wow, that boy must of had a helluva Pops to make him grow up the way he did" and make me feel satisfied that my dad would be proud if he could see what I was doing, I'd just be too busy to feel sorry for myself or have bad days. I never expected it would be this hard.

Everybody has regrets when they lose somebody; the things you wish you had done or said or maybe the things you wish you had not done or not said - the things you would change. I was fortunate in this respect; my dad and I had a really rocky relationship my last two or three years of high school, and we butted heads constantly and we fought, but when I got into college it was almost like it was all water under the bridge. I realize now that most of the friction we had in high school was him trying to push me onto the right path in life. My biggest regret - that I didn't know him as well as I feel like I should have - is probably really nothing more than me wishing I had more time with him. I'd say I knew him about as well as any 21 or 22 year old knows his father; very well as a parent, but just tolerably well as a friend. We did a good job making time to just shoot the breeze once or twice a week, but I was still growing into my role as his friend. I never expected him to be gone so soon.

I am under the impression that, going forward, there will be many, many times in my life where something occurs to me and I'll wonder what he would have thought of it, or what he would have said, or if he would have smiled. He was a few months away from his 62nd birthday when he passed; just looking forward to drawing his first Social Security payment. Maybe it's just the melancholy speaking, but I feel a little bit like that is a metaphor for the way he went. He'd worked his whole life providing for his family, on trying to make sure my sister and I grew up right. He'd been paying in for years, investing all his time in us. All that time. Our fights. His unending business trips. All of it. And now, less than a year from my sister's high school graduation and my own graduation from college, he's gone. He'd worked through the hard parts. What was left? Watching us cross our respective stages? Seeing us meet people and fall in love with them? Spoiling his grandkids? On the darker days it almost seems like some kind of cruel joke - on the good days, it just makes me want to follow my cousin's advice, to live to make him proud, even more.

Among the most well known of Shakespeare quotes is "Parting is such sweet sorrow." Every time I've read it in Romeo & Juliet, I've thought of it in its romantic context; it makes me think of girls I have loved, of that peculiarity of the human condition wherein we remember the best when times are worst. These past couple of days though, it has been running through my head very frequently when my thoughts turn to my dad. It is the phrase that I think best describes how I feel when I think of the things he has done for me, and the things I will never get to do for him. I know that he will always live on as long as I live on, even if it is just as a little nagging voice that crops up from time to time when my life comes to some sort of critical juncture or insignificant waystation to say "This would make Dad smile." I don't know if I have ever felt such a sickly sweet emotion as I did the first time it occurred. The day of his funeral, a Saturday in September, I came home feeling as though I had spent the day being completely deconstructed in front of 30 or 40 family friends. Nothing left but a pile of debris and dust. That was the first time I ever had that feeling.

A cousin or aunt or uncle, trying to get things back to normal, turned the television to college football. My dad had never cared about the sport until I went to school and started caring, but after that he started to follow the Gamecocks and the SEC religiously. This was the weekend that really cemented 2007 as the season of the upset in college football. Maryland beat Rutgers; Auburn beat (undefeated) Florida; Illinois beat Penn State; Tulane played LSU close for a half, and Mississippi State led South Carolina for a worrisome amount of time. Watching the college football rankings turned on their heads that afternoon, I couldn't help but think that this would make my dad smile. He would have called me the next day. At first we would have talked about the Gamecocks, and how close of a game it was for a while, but then how relieved we were to see the Head Ball Coach win it in the end. Then we would have talked about the other games. He would have told me how he could really see SC having a chance to win the SEC and, if they could do that, even going to the national title game. He would have asked how my week was and if I was keeping up with my schoolwork. It was nice to think of dad in the present and even the future tense for a change. I relished the imagined conversation and the escape it provided from the dark and surreal events of the day. It also began to dawn on me that, from that point forward, nothing would ever be the same again.