Excerpt: At Peace?

Excerpt from 7 Days:

Journal Entry: October 28, 2006

I feel at peace with my dad's death. I can't believe it. I feel like he's in a better place, and although I miss him at times, it's not overwhelming like I expected. I wonder why it seems easier to be here without him. I don't have to feel guilty about being gay because he's not here to have the uncomfortable religion talks with me anymore. I don't have to feel guilty about not going to church with him on Easter Sunday. I don't have to see him in that hole in the wall room he rented from [Edward]. I don't have to shield myself from the way he lived. Hard to admit to anyone but this journal that I was ashamed of him sometimes. There were things about him I was ashamed of. I wish it wasn't so, but it was. The truck he drove. I told myself I just wanted him to drive a nicer truck, just wanted him to be safe, to stop getting things stolen out of it. But I was embarrassed that he drove such a crappy truck. That he didn't have the material things that impress people, that sometimes still impress me, even as I try not to let them. I don't even think—it's not the truck I was ashamed of.

I don't believe that a car tells the whole story about a person, but there is something to be taken away from it. I know he just couldn't afford a better truck. I know he wasn't a bad person because of the truck he drove. But then, he never felt like he deserved a better truck. He felt like he deserved what he had, that God handed him this life he was living. That he had no say in the events, only his actions and reactions. His life ended up being a reaction to everything going on around him. 

I wonder when the last time he really lived his life was.