mental musings as I meandered my way home from the park

I found myself contemplating grief as I walked home from the park. Actually the contemplation started earlier, when I paused my walk through the local park to sit on a bench by the... pond (it is a shallow but large concrete bottomed body of water about an acre large) to watch a pair of Canada geese munching grass along the... shore.
I sat enjoying the spring color - intense hues of sky, leaf and bloom. The black neck of the goose closest me was glossy. The eyes beady black, and the bill smooth shiny black. I was mesmerized by its color and movement.  I admired the way the muscles moved as the goose lowered and raised its head.
Somehow in the stillness and beauty I let go of me ego, stopped the to do list in my mind, and just immersed myself in the moment. In that still, quiet place I felt peace, and a tinge of ... longing, loss? Not sorrow, exactly. Not sadness... the feeling was not heavy, yet it was full of thoughts of Dad.

I had worn the flannel-lined cotton button-down shirt Dad wore all the time that final year. I thought about how soft and warm it was as I sat in the breeze on the cool spring day. I felt the lining and appreciated how soft the flannel is, and how he must have appreciated that softness.  Beneath that burgundy shirt I was wearing a hunter green v-neck woolen pullover sweater that I bought the day Dad died.
That Saturday late afternoon, I stopped at the local mall. As I walked past a men's slippers display, I felt this overwhelming sadness. A heaviness that nearly collapsed me. I stood staring at those slippers, so like Dads. I thought of Dad and how he was dying. I saw him shuffling through the house in those chocolate brown slippers of his. I swear I could hear the shuffle of them sliding on the laminate wood floor. It was as if in an instant I stood not in the mall, but in the living room at home.
When I gathered my wits, I walked away from the slipper display and out of the store. [I still have a hard time looking at men's slippers of a certain kind. Rather than remind me of Dad, they remind me of that moment of heaviness, of pending loss, of utter dread encased in realization.] I went into the vintage shop adjacent to the store I just left, in the hopes of distracting myself from sadness and stress, but I ended up finding a rack of sweaters like the one's Dad wore when I was a kid. Later, in high school and college, I wore them - soft, v-necked pullovers in various colors.  I bought one off the rack, after I stood for a moment in tears in the store.

As I sat on the bench by the pond in the park today, I smiled at the thought that I had on both the green sweater and the button-down shirt. I smiled at the thought of how I carry Dad with me everywhere, all the time, even when I am not wearing the shirt or sweater.
I carry him in the way that I see the world, in my personality. In my values, in my looks, even in my essence, in some ways.
I stood up and continued my walk.

As I approached my house, I began composing, in my mind, a reflection on grief - how it is ... unknowable, omni-present, yet elusive, how we culturally try to bind it or ignore it - or both.

It has been 18 months now since Dad died. A year and a half. Yet still the grieving is palpable. I thought about how the emotions now are less ... I cannot find the 'right' word to express the quick and intense onslaught of extreme sadness, loneliness, loss, anger, dejection that would encompass me in unexpected places and unanticipated times.
I consider how cultural expectation is to suppress those extremes of emotion. To be fine. To be in control. To be…presentable.

I did not try to deny the emotions, and I was often alone, so I could experience them seemingly fully.  Then just as inexplicably as they arrived, they would ease (or I would distract myself somehow, or cry them out).

Now the bursts of feeling are less intense, less frequent, yet just as mysterious. Like a microburst of emotion that roll into the weather of my psyche.

As I walked under the bright blue spring sky dappled with wispy clouds,I thought about how I spent so much of my childhood with Dad. He was home with me when Mom worked. When he did work, I often went to work with him, both when he installed sprinkler systems and later when he worked for school districts. I would tag-along in the truck, or in the maintenance room, or his office. I would work wander hallways and visit sports fields.

I cannot even recall how many times we traveled to Florida together to visit Apryle, Alan and Keith. Sometimes with Mom, sometimes on our own.

As I passed under the newly leafed out trees, I remembered that later, when I was in late high school and college, between the rebellion of adolescence and the anger at some choices he made, I was always stubbornly battling with Dad. Arguing, asserting, distancing myself, yet still, so close. I recalled the anger, disappointment and bitter disillusion. Perfection gone, humanity prevalent.

As I passed blooms of lilac, tulip, daffodil and magnolia, I consider how finally, years later, but long  before he got sick, I worked on actively restoring our relationship. I intentionally strove at letting go of some anger, and forgiving him for being human.

This evening, cozy in my sweatpants and t-shirt, seated at my desktop computer table, typing into a slate grey keyboard, I tap the reflection into a blog entry.  I have no goal with this write. No resolution or reveal I am building to. I just wanted to write out the experience, to record the reflection.  Maybe it is my form of talking about ‘it’. (the it of how I feel, the it of what I think, the it of processing the loss, the it or letting go, the it of holding on.)
I love you, Dad. I know you knew, and I imagine that is some comfort (or it is supposed to be, right).