Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Journal 108 Home Again

We're home, we got in last night after a very longggg day of travelling, which included one delayed plane, one unscheduled stop for fuel, and a duty-free store that was (gasp) OUT OF BAILEY'S IRISH CREAM.

The trip was amazing in every single way, and I won't bore to tears with lots of pics of the same old thing--beach, sand and water, sunshine, endless blue.
But as Mike and I both agreed last night, after we got in, I unpacking and doing laundry while he shopped for food for a late dinner; we were glad to be 'home'. Well, home for me, second home for him.
He cooked a chicken pasta while I emptied the suitcases and by 1am I was fast asleep.

Waking up at about 8 this morning, the city felt quiet for a Friday the 13th, rounding out a week with a full moon. Then I looked outside. Giant snowflakes were lazily falling, and I felt such a sense of true gratitude and peace. I don't have to go anywhere today, I don't have to drive, I'm not back at work yet. I just have to clean up, run some errands, renew library books, pick up my mail...but on my own timeline.
Mike is not feeling that great and on the best of days he's not an early riser, so I've just been drinking tea (staving off the last of my cold), catching up with friends on email and by phone, and cleaning and doing the last of the laundry (my policy is anything that has been packed in a suitcase and taken on a trip gets washed, worn or not. And I wayyyy overpacked this time).

My writer's block disappeared soon after I first posted about it, and now I have lots of ideas for blog entries, and I journalled through-out the trip, sometimes alone on the beach, the sun beating down, a Heineken close at hand. Pausing my pen when a word or a phrase eluded me, but for the most part, just letting words flow out. I did have a very bad grief day on our third day in, almost as if I needed to work through some of the roller-coaster-y emotions after a very busy couple of weeks--Christmas, then the end of 2011, a close friend's recent loss of her father, and my wedding without my own father. The busy-ness precluded me having any real time to reflect and by the time I'd been away for a couple of days, all of it kind of crashed down on me. I'll write more about it--it really needs a post of its' own, which I've started work on.

The bad grief day came and went, as the bad days always do. After it goes, after the extra tears have been cried, life feels a bit more live-able and not as terrifying.
It's been seven months today since my Dad died, and I still turn the event over and over again, but some part of me knows that this is part of how I heal--re-visiting, remembering, re-living, and ultimately, re-learning.

For today, I sit and watch the snow, think quiet thoughts.
Gratitude still abounds.

No comments:

Post a Comment