10 years ago today my world did a flip. Or maybe it was a crash. This was the day my Dad died. It was the day that I learned that grief is a tangible thing, that it can alter the very fabric of being and change the lens through which one sees the world.
10 years. It seems so long ago, so much has happened. Yet the other thing I’ve learned about grief is that it creates a separate timeline, one that exists parallel to the day to day one we live on the clock. It is time out of time. 10 years and yet when I close my eyes I can still hear my Dads voice. Sometimes I dream him so clearly I can smell his Dad smell old spice and lever 2000 and that hairspray he used. Familiar smells. Comforting smells. Sometimes I miss him so much my gut wrenches and tears come seemingly out of nowhere. Other times I laugh because I recall a story he told or an experience we had together. We talk to him here at home. When we can’t find a nail that is the right size and then discover one in our inherited stash we thank him. When I am scared or something is hard I ask him to hold my hand and have my back. Sometimes I’m pretty sure he hears me. I carry so much of my Dad inside of me. He taught me how to love hard and with abandon. How to be a friend. He taught me that it’s ok to agree to disagree (even though he was always right ) My Dad taught me much through his death too. He taught me about resilience, rememberance, reminded me about the power and necessity of ritual, the requirement of connection, and the gift of solitude. Sometimes people become saints in their death, their flaws stripped away until only the good remains in remembrance. I remember my Dads flaws. He was not perfect. But neither am I. And that perfect imperfection is part of what keeps us connected it is a part of the remembering that matters. There is more. There will always be more. Things I learned and things I am learning. What is remembered lives. And even still I miss you Dad.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorEmily is a somatic psychotherapist, witch, nature lover, animal friend and writer. She resides in Northern California. Archives
May 2021
Categories |