A Captain-less Ship

I’ve been your second mate so long, it feels unnatural to slip on your hat and chart the ensuing path at the helm. The wind is at my back, however, and I have many fellow sailors helping me hold the wheel steady and true. My eyes are ever fixed on the horizon and I feel your presence all around, all the time.

I lost my dad - as many of us have and will. I’m doing all the grief things, processing all the changes, being pragmatic, stoic, a realist. My dad and I are so alike in this way. I wonder, though, if in his quiet moments he literally sobbed like I do at the profound loss that death creates. I don’t really cry, I just straight up weep, expelling gut-wrenching, verbalized sobs into the void. And then I’m done…at least for the day.

We haven’t been to Hummingbird Ranch since Easter, because not only did I lose my father, but also my grandmother. Her death at 105 is a different sadness - acknowledged as a life achievement rather than a life taken away.

There’s just been a lot going on, but here I am, sitting by my fake fire, in the comfort of the Mesa Ridge feeling inspired to share my heart. That’s what this place does to me. It cracks open my steel-trap soul, and lets a little trickle out. You readers are the bystanders to the crash, you can look away if you want, but it’s also weirdly compelling. For me too, because I often read these missives back as if I’m watching from the outside.

So for right now, no heady descriptions of the animals or landscape, just honest reflection of where I am in this space and time.

Dad, I know you are with me in the morning clouds, wispy and curled, but mostly at night when the stars wink a knowing signal to me.

xx