One Year

One year ago today, my dad died. So did Prince, and my family quietly mourned our own loss amidst the swirling grief of the world. As did the families of all the other people who passed on April 21, 2016. Our grief is not special. Our grief is not unique. But it is our grief.

One year ago today, for the first time, we felt external movement from the baby growing inside me. I'm sure many other people felt their unborn children move, too. Our joy and excitement were not unique or special or different, but of course, to us...to me, it was. I wrote about it here.

This morning, I forgot to light the Yartzeit candle for my dad before I left the house. I was late for work, and in the rush to get extra baby snuggles and still get out the door, I left the candle sitting on top of the fridge. I knew I should have put it on the counter last night, where I'd be sure to see it this morning, but I didn't. My brain has a hard time remembering things, which I hear is perfectly normal. It's hard to not be hurt by my forgetfulness sometimes, though I remind myself that these things happen. That it's ok. That it's not really a big deal. And it is ok, and it's not significant in the grand scheme of the world, and my dad would not likely be offended by my slip. But still. We'll light it when I get home from work, and it'll burn for 24 hours, and we'll remember my dad, as we remember him always.

There are good days and hard days, and life with a baby certainly provides a number of distractions I hadn't even imagined. Some days I forget, and I reach for my phone to call my dad, but those days are fewer and farther between. I think I'm starting to learn.

Healing is a tough thing. Reconciling living your new life with remembering your old one. I've been doing a lot of that lately, with the grief over my dad and the challenges of motherhood. Eventually it's not your "new life" anymore, it's just your life. It just is.

I'm about the same age as Margie in this picture, and I still have that satin Paramount jacket my dad is wearing. It's a trip, as my dad would say, to think about the passage of time, and to think that I was once this small, and he was once this young, and here we are today. It just is. And we just are.