From Where I Left Off

Likely another quick and not-about-writing post. But since there are folks wanting to know how things are since last week’s posting, here’s this.

I arrived safely home, last night, after again driving straight through. (Silly me, the internet map said it’d take fourteen hours and change, and I, computer programer and all, still believed it. It was more like eighteen hours.) It was a long slog. Both of the drives were. But I arrived, both times, safe and all in one piece.

I’m still kinda convoluted, emotion and how-are-you-doing-wise. I haven’t had a break down as of yet. But then, when I’ve felt the grief rising, I’ve pushed it down. (Then, while at the hospital, having seen your father’s body undraped in the drawer of their morgue cooler, nor days later while negotiating highway traffic, are the times to allow oneself to fall apart to pieces.) The good news is I’m back to work, tomorrow, so I’ll be occupied. The bad news is the same news.

Oddly, I find myself grateful for so many things. That I was able to drive to and fro unscathed, with no near misses, no figurative bumps in the road. That things worked quietly and simply in positive ways—not that Dad’s death was a positive experience for any of us. Still, in small and private ways, things worked out, when they could have just as easily, maybe more easily, worked out otherwise, as per Jane Kenyon’s poem.

Due to circumstances, I essentially left things hanging in my current life, in order to deal with things surrounding Dad’s death. Now that some of those things have been taken care of, in one fashion or another other, and I’ve returned home, those “hanging things” are now waiting to be dealt with. (For instance, I renewed my driver’s license this afternoon, and early tomorrow, I’ll be back to work as though I didn’t have a full week off.)

Of course, there’s so much to yet to be said. But for now, perhaps it’ll suffice to say I’m starting anew, right where I left off.