The blogfest for September is "Moving On." Please click on the link below the photo here, to see what the other participating bloggers chose to write about this month!
This couldn't be more on topic for me. My father's birthday is the 25th of this month.
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Spring |
February 12, 2013. This was a day, a perfect day, for moving
on. Oh no, not me, not yet anyway. My
father. But then again, it was a moving on for me as well.
“My bags are packed, I’m ready to go.
I’m standing here outside your door.
Already I’m so lonesome I could cry.”
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Summer |
I stood in
his room, alone with his body, tears running, my hands constantly moving over
his arms, his neck, his cheeks, his hands. He hadn’t needed any bags to go on
this last journey, but I certainly would. I stood with him for forty-five
minutes. That’s how long it took the funeral home to get the gurney into the
hospice unit at the VA. They came to take away the last part of him I would
ever see or touch, his body. In the end he wasn’t afraid because the stroke
took him so fast he had no time to ponder. I’m glad. He wasn’t a man to let
fear take him without a fight, and at the end, he didn’t have to fight.
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Fall |
But now my
journey has begun. I’m moving on to a life without my father in it. I thought I
would be ready when the time came, but what a laugh, on me, that turned out to
be. Seven months later I’m still crying. I dreamed of him last night and woke
up unable to breathe because the grief was so powerful, heavy and pressing. I
feel my baggage is my words. It is the file I made in which to keep my writing
of him, dreams, thoughts, memories, photos. I keep one on my computer and in
the “cloud” so I am always able to click open the suitcase and paw through to
find what I need in any given moment. Or I open that suitcase to add a new page,
a new thought or dream. These I will carry with me as my bags, my baggage, a part
of his legacy to me as I move on. I know, well, I’ve been told that time will
help give more laughter and smiles to the grief, but I guess I’ve not moved on that far yet. So I will write, dream,
cry, mourn, love, and remember, as I move down the new road before me,
traveling a bit lighter in one area and a bit heavier in another.
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Winter |
Balance. I’m looking for balance.
Images from:
1000awesomethings.com