It doesn’t seem possible, that dad has been gone seven years this week. I will stand in remembrance tonight at services, but although that gives me some peace, it is not how I honor his memory. What I have learned through losing both my parents is that the memories flood back at interesting times. It isn’t just the annual reminder of when they passed, although you feel that as well, it is the everyday things that cross your mind. The coffee they drank (constantly), the phone call you want to make after something happened at work that you know they would support, or even just that glimpse of them in a moment of time. The you should be here feeling at the strangest moments. It is when you want to call your parents just to run an idea by them, and they aren’t there anymore. Grief is a process, I guess you never really get over losing someone, but instead, you learn to appreciate them in new ways.
I am feeling pretty restless lately, not sure why actually. I just feel like there is something that I need to do, a change that I need to make, but still pretty unclear about what that change should be. I think it is all that next chapter business that my friends talk about. Maybe it is spending most of my summer with the family facing age-related health struggles, that reminds me that life is short and that you may not have time to do all the things you think about doing later, next summer, next year. I am not in the position to pack up my bags and travel the world for a year or to take a sabbatical to figure it out. I have to like most of us, live daily life and make my changes within those dynamics.
Summer is over for me this weekend, and the rush of back to school and the daily 5:00 am wake ups begin again my daily grind. So maybe the lesson, for now, is how to make little changes in our everyday moments, instead of the “all or nothing” mentality I tend to have. Maybe we don’t always jump into something with both feet, but instead, tippy-toe into the water little by little. And with those little moments of change, bigger things will happen.
