What am I waiting for?

So many of you have asked exactly why I haven't been on the road, and I've given a few different responses, which were all true in some sense, but none of those reasons really answered the question "why?"  I am finishing college. I was attempting to start a life with a woman whom I love. I want to be closer to my family.  But why?  Why did I chose to try all of that now?  A stagnancy was building in my life.  I reached a plateau, and from that point on I had no compass.  I had been "along for the ride" for so long that I started to forget what it was that defined me, or what I thought defined me, anyway.

I mowed the lawn with my dad this past Saturday.

Let me clarify.  My father was killed in a car accident when I was 8 years old.  He was drunk, fell asleep at the wheel and hit a tree.  Game over.
So when I say that I mowed the lawn with my dad, what I mean is that I reached a certain mental state where I could see his life coincide with my life.

There I was pushing a lawn mower up and down the grass, the very same grass that my dad used to mow all those years ago.  I am now around the same age that he was when he mowed it, and I'm working the same golf course job that he did while he was here. 

When I was little, I always told him that I wanted to be just like him when I grew up, never understanding his feelings on the matter. He would tell me that I shouldn't want to work on the golf course,  but at the stage when he was both my best friend and my hero, I wanted to be just like him and there was nothing anyone could say or do to convince me otherwise.

So now, 22 years after his death, I find myself in the exact same place he was, and suddenly the past became much clearer.  I realized that he didn't want to be here doing what he was doing, but like me, he made the best of it that he could while he was here. And something about that realization really brought me back to my childhood.  I could see my life path as it has played out behind me, and I could see one path laid out before me, if I chose to go that route. I'd fall in love, I'd get comfortable and I'd settle. The past 9 years of my life will have been just a phase that I went through until I got tired of swimming against the current, and gave up for something safe and familiar.  I'd end up just like my dad.

I was having quite a "conversation" with my father and it occurred to me that since his death, some part of me has remained frozen as an 8 year-old boy, still waiting for his father to come home, never giving up hope. No one around him could see that or they did not have the heart to tell him otherwise. I never had the chance to say goodbye, no final words, nothing. I went to bed one night with a dad, woke up the next morning without one.  Because of that, a part of me refused to believe that he was really gone. Some part of me just couldn't move on.

I kept lingering on here in a holding pattern hoping for a sign from him or some acknowledgement that I'm on the right path, and I suddenly realized that it's never going to happen, I'm never going to see his ghost floating down the hallway from the corner of my eye, I'm never going to see him looking back at me in the mirror because this whole time, it was me.  I am his ghost. I've been stuck, unable to move on because of some unfinished business.  But I think I've finally finished it. I know that he's proud of who I am. I don't have to wonder anymore because I can see it. I've lived his life just like I told him I would, but I've also done things that he would be so jealous of.  My best friends are rockstars for fuck's sake!  Oh man he would have LOVED to be on tour. I used to hang out here and listen to him play guitar for hours.  He taught me all about rock n roll: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, Kentucky Headhunters, Tesla, Creedence, Lynyrd Skynyrd. I toured with Tesla, I've hung out with Lynyrd Skynyrd. Suck on that, dad! :) Somehow I just know that he's laughing about what an idiot I've been, waiting to start living my life.  The funny thing is that I've been living this whole time and never even realized it.
So for now, I'm going to finish rebuilding myself here, and after that, anything is possible.

The moral of the story that you may have heard a hundred times before: Don't let your past get in the way of your future!