Ten Years
10/1/2024 11:56 pm | : 5 mins. | Share to: 
Ten years is a long time. The world has changed a lot in ten years. I've changed a lot in ten years. And, yet, it's also a blink of an eye. A cosmic blip on the timeline of everything.
Ten years ago, I got a call that broke me. I had to blearily text my friend asking him to help. We called Katie, and she walked out on training of a new job to come get me. I had gotten word that my dad had died.
I had gone to see him a few weeks earlier, something I will forever be thankful to have done. We had been told we had more time, but suddenly he was gone.
I was talking with that friend today about it. "What it's like?" He was also dealing with the death of his father recently. I don't remember exactly what I said in the moment, something about the missing never disappears, but it does soften. I think. As the day has gone on, I have spent more time thinking about it.
The truth is that all mourning fades, eventually, from the incinerating inferno of pain and sadness into embers and coals that glow hot only occasionally when the wind blows just right.
I miss both of my parents. There are times that I think about them. What they'd think of something, or say to me. Or I have memories of them pop-up seemingly randomly. But those don't necessarily set the embers glowing again, sometimes they are just memories - both happy or sad, or even sometimes detached as just something you observe in your mind. But sometimes, boy, can that ember flame again.
For dad, it's usually sports and movies. I got emotional earlier this year watching a race during the Olympics. Hearing the tone sportscasters take watching someone perform an amazing athletic feat is really powerful for me and makes me think of dad. For mom, it's crafts, and books, and some music that set her embers alight.
For others, I have found that eventually some of those other embers inside me do fade and extinguish. Things which would have started that emotional churn inside me don't anymore. And that is simply a reality. Memories fade. Emotions and feelings soften and blur.
But for those special few in our lives, the ones who truly shape us: parents, mentors, best friends, siblings, and so many others - those leave deep lasting impressions - those are the embers that we always carry.
Keanu Reeves, when asked what he thinks happens to us after we die, replied simply, "I know that the ones who love us will miss us."
And it's true. Those who you truly love, those are the ones whose embers burn on. Sure, those feelings of pain and sorrow will soften and lessen, but there will always remain that flickering ember just waiting for the right breeze to set it aflame again and remind you of that love you hold for them. That love which, after they are gone, is what we feel as sadness and grief.
