There’s a ziploc bag of ashes in my office. Top right hand shelf above a Bob Mould album I bought but have never unwrapped because, well, my daughter has the record player in her room. It’s from dad’s passing 3 years ago, a time that feels at once like a long time ago and just like last week.  

I of course miss him greatly, but with absence there’s a deadening of the immediacy of someone’s passing. If anything I am still amazed at the hole still left in my world and how quickly the world tries to fill that hole and moves on.  It’s like the world was waiting at the ready to fill that spot with something, anything really. 

It’s not unlike the feel of the news cycle. Take Hurricane Laura for instance. A week ago it slammed ashore, mostly annihilating Lake Charles, Louisiana and now that city has no running water or electricity for weeks to come. People made appearances, said “We won’t forget, we’ve got you Lake Charles.” and this morning an article about “mystery holes in the Siberian tundra” appear before any mention of that city and aftermath. That’s what death feels like. A flourish of tribute followed by an eternity of “on to the next thing.”

I don’t say all this to be dramatic. I had planned on resharing what I wrote right after he died and I still may. I write it because that feeling, the one that makes me want to yell “Don’t move on. Don’t forget.” Remains. 

I think about how we think to ourselves or talk in hushed tones about how others need to “move on” after the loss of someone. To “get over it”. Not until you have lost someone dear will you realize how personal and individual that is. Maybe it’s also age. When my grandmother passed away 20 years ago I was nearing 30, still young enough to not consider much. Moving on was easier. Seventeen years later it was different and honestly closer and the loss was much different and greater. 

I talk a lot about our impact on others. Nothing reveals this impact quite as much than the removal of an impactful force. A parent. A friend. Today that’s what I’m thinking about and trying to capture.  That crater in your chest that you feel is real. It’s not “going away”.  The goal I think is to fill it with as much memory as you can. 

Today there’s a ziploc filled with ashes on the top shelf of my office trying to fill the space left by the man it  once was. 

An impossibility. 

#hugsanhi5s