I'm thankful for loving & attentive family and friends. thankful for my siblings' presence and my mom's resilience. thankful for garden work, school work, and the comfort of routine.
I am thankful, too, for warmth, sunlight, clouds, our cats, our dogs. thankful for quietness, for darkness, and solitude, and blankets.
for those of you who can only manage to say "this is awful, I'm so sorry" - you're right. it is awful, and I'm sorry, too. thank you for acknowledging it for what it is. for those of you who will say "it's going to be okay, in time," I'm taking your word for it, because I've never lost someone this close to me, or this suddenly. for those of you who have made me laugh, and looked me in the eye, held me, and done nice things, thank you. all of those little instances make a big difference.
in some ways this feels like a crescendo of a season of losses. in my mind the tokens of childhood have been snatched away at a slow and steady rate, like the bitter beating on an ancient drum. our old dogs, the house, the horses, gone. but my very father?
like the rest of my family and many others who knew and loved my dad, my emotions go from shock to despair to acceptance and back again. but here's the deal: I don't really know what I am accepting.
my dad's death is, for now, the rub. it is the crux of things. my family was one thing before saturday evening and it is something else now.
it's pretty hard to believe that I'm only three days in.
interestingly, this line from Wendell Berry's short story Fidelity has been on my heart ever since I first heard of my dad's condition:
She thought it strange and wonderful that she had been given all these to love. She thought it a blessing that she had loved them to the limit of her grief at parting with them, and that grief had only deepened and clarified her love.
my goofy, capable, warm, affectionate, humble father has been taken from us. his death has not merely opened up a gaping hole but rather, a new dimension. I will be exploring it for the rest of my days.
so, I am thankful for all of those things I mentioned above. but most of all I am thankful for my father.
