Emotional Aftershocks

As I’ve noted, I’m not a huge fan of looking in the rearview.  Serves no purpose, gives me a bitch of a stiff neck, and completely distracts me from enjoying the present and thinking hopefully about the future.

Sometimes, though, things don’t live in the rearview, and if you’re not careful, they will sneak up and overtake you.  So what’s a girl to do?  I don’t know, but it happened to me this week and thus I have a few thoughts that I want to share.

This was my first Father’s Day without a real-live dad.  It was also my mom’s birthday.  I also needed to be in Chicago for work.  So I did what felt right at the time and decided to go early, on Saturday, so I could have some fun with college friends before work started and so I could distract myself.

Right.  I had fun, but more “fun” than fun.  I couldn’t shake the low-level feeling of sadness, mainly because it was palpable.  Loss sometimes has a weight, and it can be seen in the stooping of my shoulders and the drooping of the corners of my mouth…

I woke up Sunday morning and the tears just came.  I let them flow, took a deep breath, showered, and decided to muscle through.  I called my mom and tried to put a smile in my voice as I wished her happy birthday in one sentence and acknowledged the sharp pain of missing Dad in the next.  All in all it was a hard day.  

And now it’s over.

Life goes on.

So not that there weren’t moments of sadness over dad or guilt over running away and “abandoning” my mom on a day that was doubly hard for here, but it’s done now.  And here I am at the airport, waiting for my flight, and anxious to get back home and face my life and my house and my mom and my family and my girlfriend and my still-green pool.

I’m not sure I’m in the clear and that there still won’t be reverberations from the Father’s Day tremors…but I’ll try to keep the past in the rearview so that I can be present in my todays and preserve hope for the future.

We’ll always have hope, and we’ll always have love.