New Year

Christmas came and went and we survived, even though it sometimes hurt so badly I couldn't see. And then it didn't hurt and then it did and and then it didn't and back and forth and the waves keep coming...

Life. It is so incredibly messy and twisted. We build these foundations of "security" that are just fabrications. Our minds cannot cope with the knowledge that everything is absolutely impermanent, so we create little security blankets of twisted bits of thread. The illusion of control and safety is what allows us to rise each morning and move through each day, working and cleaning and fiddling our lives away with the unimportant necessities that living in a society require. All the while we are holding this threadbare-blanket over our heads, like toddlers in our cribs, hoping to keep the monsters away.

There is a huge, gaping, ragged hole in my blanket and I am unsure if I even want to try to stitch it together again. If I keep staring through the holes in my safety blanket, if I acknowledge the monsters every morning, perhaps the inevitable destruction they WILL bring won't be as much of a shock. As I've always said, and thought I understood; it's not IF someone dies, it's WHEN they die. If I am truly grateful to see someone each time we get together, knowing that it's never a guarantee, will it help to keep my eyes open to the fragility of this entire experience on Earth?

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Separate brain rant: If I hear one more person compare the death of their loved one to something mystical and beautiful, I MAY JUST SCREAM. It was not peaceful, it was not beautiful. I did not feel grateful that he finally left and that his pain was over, because the pain didn't go away, it just transferred to all of us. Death from cancer was messy and ugly and cruel. It took so much from him and us and took so incredibly long... Knowing that people are experiencing our pain right now, every day, over and over again, just rips me up.

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And now it's 2017 and it's a new year and the end of the year that my father last lived. 2016 was his last year, and that year is over... And I honestly just want to take one more picture with him.