Happy Heavenly Birthday
To my dad
April 28th, 2024
Dear Dad,
Yesterday would have been your 88th birthday. The last birthday I celebrated with you was my 40th, 6 years ago. That was one of the best and worst years of my life.
Sitting here reflecting, I can see how much I’ve grown.
How much I am still growing.
That was the first year I went on a real adult vacation out of the country. This past year I have lived abroad and been traveling more than ever.
Now I’m tired and just want to go home for a while. I haven’t lived in my apartment for 1 whole year.
I was fighting it for so long. Fighting anything that felt like “going back”. I was SO AFRAID of getting stuck.
SO AFRAID of falling into a dull monotonous life.
I had dinner with Sue D. the other night and she asked me a question I have been thinking about ever since.
“Do you think your traveling was a part of your grief?”
I never traveled much before you passed. Honestly, I think your passing was a huge part of wanting to travel. A catalyst for living a fuller life.
An escape from that feeling of getting stuck in a small town forever. Stuck in a passionless life of doing things I didn’t love.
It brought to light the fact that life itself is fleeting and we only get one. Do it now, before time runs out. Do all the things I love.
I better go LIVE my life!
What’s funny is that living abroad showed me that while I was experiencing all these new and exciting things, I was actually holding myself back from doing many of the things I truly love.
I’m doing it!
I’m living!
Everyone would watch me on social media and think I was living my best life. Some loved that I was traveling, and others would message me telling me to hurry up and come home.
I know if you were alive, you would have been worried to death about me. You always worried. So many people at home were and it annoyed me. Yet others were thrilled for me. In fact, I think some envied the fact that I was brave, or maybe crazy, enough to do it.
What they didn’t see was all the things I was actually going through along the way. All the anxiety I had. All the things I had sacrificed. All the parts of me I had sacrificed in trying to make it work out the way I wanted it to.
But I can tell you what it has done for me.
It has opened my eyes to the fact that there is a whole big world waiting out there. It has shown me that there is a small town of people who love, care and miss me at home. And a handful of people who were wishing they had the guts to do it.
It has taught me how to see the genuine people in my life and read through the ones who just want to use me for their own benefit.
Most importantly, it has shown me that love comes in so many forms.
That when people truly love you, you can feel it in the way they treat you. In their actions.
It brought GROWTH.
I now see that going “back” doesn’t mean moving backwards, because like losing you, I will never be the same person I was before.
It has opened my eyes and my heart.
The day before your birthday would have been my friend Katie’s birthday. That day, everything was irritating the crap out of me. Work, the weather, people talking. Everything.
Then I realized what it really was.
Grief.
It was creeping through my mind and body. All these uncomfortable emotions swimming around, trying to find their escape.
So, I sat with them a moment.
Then I watched as they slowly rolled their way down my cheeks.
As I wiped them away.
But wasn’t I just so happy. I was doing good! Didn’t I get over this??
My logical, rational brain tried to make sense of it all.
I still couldn’t understand how illogical grief is. How it works.
Just like love.
There is no valid explanation.
It just is.
But dad, I’m still trying.
Trying to live in the moment.
Trying to remember to take each moment as it comes.
The good. The bad. The indifferent.
Remembering these little moments are fleeting, yet they are the ones that we hold inside our hearts.
That warm cup of coffee while we sat in silence on a Sunday morning. That smell of sawdust while Marty Robbins played on the radio and the sound of the table saw buzzed in your workshop. You, standing in the doorway each night as I lay in bed saying, “Night punkin”.
Because dad, those are all the things that truly matter. I try to remember that every day!
Thank you for those moments.
Every single one.
Oh, and dad, Happy Heavenly Birthday!
Love Always,
Elissa
Check out the Happy Birthday video I made here
Thanks for reading…
Originally published on www.gingerfunksblog.com
