Seventeen minutes

On the floor watching anchovies swim
Monterey Bay Aquarium

Today makes one month since my dad died.  Today my air conditioner stopped working again.  Today I cried a lot, but there was also a moment when I thought about my dad and smiled – a really happy smile – at a memory and I did not cry.  Today I went back to yoga for the first time in a few weeks, and that was really helpful, except for the part at the end where the teacher told the class that we’d just added seventeen minutes onto our lives (it was a Bikram class, the most devoted Bikram fans think it’s Super Duper Majikal) and since that’s pretty much to the minute how much my step mom and I missed getting to the hospital to hold my dad’s hand while he died, that undid me.

But I feel a little bit better lately.  It’s not that I am, exactly, but I’m focusing on reframing the situation and it’s starting to help.  I was so lucky to have him and he was a happy person, really.  What else can anyone ask for in their life? 

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Scuba took the girls on their second-ever Math Night tonight.  He’s the better parent between the two of us.  Witness: he bought the girls math workbooks, and takes them out to the coffee shop where he spent four years studying for his MBA and they work math problems and have hot chocolate.  I got to go to yoga while they were out, so I love Math Night more than any of them, probably.

Things move forward and get better and then they get cruddy and then they get really great.  Sometimes all crashed into each other.  I KNOW my dad doesn’t want me to sit around and grieve for him and miss out on my life.  I’m sad enough to do that, so I’m going to have to watch myself. 

 

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