I am blown away that today will mark six months since my dad died. Six months since I was sitting in my desk watching my student teacher teach and then getting a text from my mom. I remember every single second of that next three hours. Every moment of that hour drive to the hospital, the moment I realized I was walking into a chapel and not a hospital room, and seeing my dad at the hospital. Every single second-I remember. I wish I didn't.
So it blows my mind how it has been six months worth of seconds since that day. It amazes me how in one breath six months feels like six seconds and on the inhale and six years by the exhale. Some days it feels so fresh and new that I can't even bear it. Then other days it feels like years since this happened.
Six months.....the longest I have ever gone without seeing my dad was the first six weeks of college when I made him promise he wouldn't come get me no matter how homesick I was. The longest I have ever gone without talking to him-maybe a week. Since I had the kids the longest I have gone without seeing him was the week I was in Florida last year at this time. Now six months has gone by. Half a year.
Part of me wonders if it should hurt less by now. That is shouldn't take my breath away when I realize he is gone or when I take a cute picture and go to send it to him and it hits me. Then the other part of me doesn't want it to stop hurting like this. For it to stop hurting means I am getting used to it. I don't want to get used to it. I want to scream and swear and cry just like I did when I rounded that corner and saw I was going into a chapel not a hospital room.
Yet, I know He would be crushed to know how much life is just hard for us right now-all of us in our own way. Then again he never would have left us had he the choice. So just like he didn't have a choice to stay-I don't have a choice to keep going.
My husband gave me his words of wisdom yesterday when I lost it and was crying. I said it sucked. He said no it doesn't suck it just is. In a way to say that it sucks means to suggest that you can change it, or fix it. This isn't something that can be changed it just is.
Maybe I need to realize that this won't be about marking time since he left-maybe it will just be as a coworker said to me-The before and after. Maybe that is easier to think about.