Every Year, There’s a Little More Acceptance

Time goes so fast, every day is filled with tasks we do and we don’t even think about. Life marches on, we move forward whether we think we can or not.

Today is 4 years since my dad died. FOUR YEARS. I can’t even believe it’s been so long. The kids are taller now than in the last photos with him, we’re all a little older and the urge to call and tell Pa stuff is all but gone. But he’s missed. I never get on skype anymore, ever, but once it was my morning routine, to see what he’d said overnight while I slept, to converse for the few hours that we were both awake. Time zones are weird like that.

Last visit with the kids August 2010

I don’t even know how to feel. There’s a heaviness but also an acceptance because that’s what time does. They say it heals all wounds but what they mean is it puts distance between you and that event and the good experiences you’ve had since help to soothe the pain.

I don’t tear up very much anymore, I don’t get sad or cry without warning. I can look at the picture on the wall  and I don’t get a tightness in my chest. He’s gone from our physical world and that’s how it works but he’s never gone from my heart and I find myself thinking of the things he’d enjoy about us now. How the kids have grown and how they are becoming adults and figuring out the world.

Pa and Miss Gremlin 2007

2007

Pa would think ‘you blokes are alright’. And he’d be right.

I think he’d be proud.

*There’s a building going up across the street. I’m sitting outside and a worker is using an angle grinder. The sound and the smell of grinding steel is on the wind. It’s funny the things that trigger memories. It’s like I’m 14 again and he’s out in the shed building something.

Tomorrow will be better. Today I’m allowed to cry.

August 2010

I miss you Dad.

18 Aug 1938-8 July 2011