Where Did February Go?

February 2009 will likely be one of those months that I will want to but will never be able to forget. The flight of February was due to it being one of the hardest months of my life. My father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. I was so completely taken back by what happened that a week passed and I don't even think I was present. Guilt, sadness, shame all whirled around me and I was functioning at a very low level. I barely had time to process what was happening as it was me who needed to make arrangements with the mortuary and funeral home. I wanted to be a child again head in the clouds, drifting along aware but unaffected. I literally had to dig down deep to places I had never had to visit to tackle things that I had given very little thought to.

By the second week I felt like someone else pushing myself along waking with a list of duties and pushing myself forward like a drill Sargent without choice, "women you will get this done"! I don't think I have had to be that person before but was amazed at my ability to find her. It was that week that I knew I would be o.k. that somehow I was going to get through it and hopefully gain something out of my loss. It was at this time that I started thinking about things that one often thinks about when dealing with death. " what truly is important and who". I'm sure I came up with the same cliche answers that everyone does but the gift of reflection and somehow being forced to dig down deep within myself has changed me.

I am still dealing daily with the sadness that this has left me, a quite sense of loneliness that has been there long before his actual death. But the difference is I am dealing with that sadness and loneliness now and that is something that I was not able to do before. I can actually look back and see how things that happened in my youth really affected me. I am dealing with the shame associated with having a parent who is too sick with his addiction to reach out to you. I am trying to understand it and be o.k. with it that is hard! I am realizing that the shame I carried around of him reflected on how I felt about myself and I am learning to slowly let that go. I am realizing now how much I really missed him in my life and wish although I know I can't change things that my circumstances were different.

But the one thing I know for sure is that I am strong and if I can choose to grow from this and do with it what I know in my heart is right then the things he has brought me in his death are things that I will be grateful for for the rest of my life!