This past week, plus a little, my insides have been squirmy. And by insides, I mean the emotional place that inhabits mostly the whole of me. There’s the vehicle I roll around in, which currently is fine. The bits that are agitating have to do with my struggle around patience. Especially when it comes to money and shelter, two areas that are the sink holes of my inner landscape. When just one of those emotional shacks has a door flung open with wind whistling through, I can walk over to my other safe place and settle in. Or at least I think that’s how I do my avoidance dance. Another look is me shaking the shack in question attempting to make something happen. This rarely works.

Today, both those inner spots are sitting empty and no amount of circling or shaking is going to change that. Yes, it’s temporary (probably) but as I sit with the fact that I don’t have any actual control over these things, I’m left with a familiar feeling of wanting to walk away from the discomfort. But, as the saying goes, “wherever you go, there you are” or some-such like that. When I could physically step away this week, I did take some good wandering walks. A funny thing happened during them: My dad appeared in traces. Because grief is not linear; because waiting is not my forte; because this patience is a pu pu platter of stuff that features a lot of my greatest fears, the morsels of dad moments were tucked right into the mound of mashed memories.

Looking at it, I saw how the approach and then end of my dad’s life was a series of situations asking me to just be present. No matter how much I did—and boy-o, to look at my Amazon order list from 2022-23, there’s a long list of try-this products that felt like doing something—what was really required was just being there. I did try that. I also always circled around what more I could do and while in the end, the real definitive end, I understood that my presence was all that was needed, it wasn’t all peaceful. It was sometimes loud, occasionally very quiet, and once terrifyingly agitated. And then it was no more. Now, a little over six months later, I can hold the two tensions of relief for him to have stepped off before things got really unbearable and my own deep-heart missing. And it’s this latter thing that’s bubbled up as I settle into this period of waiting.

It occurs to me that when things are moving clip-clop forward, when I’m involved in doing, then naturally the light I’m filtering things through is pretty bright, possibly so direct that I’m a bit blinded to anything but this doing. When I’m forced to be still, that light’s still steady but now I can see all the particles floating around inside the beam. Ooh, dust, I think. Man, I really have to clean this place, I worry. Then I squirm around. There are times I can see how the light is refracted and looks kind of cool, how then, of course, the light&shadow shift because they always do. I’ve stayed in the same spot, the perspective has changed.

But yet, this last week, when I could get away from my waiting seat, I wandered (literally). I wandered by places I’ve been hundreds of times since moving here four years ago. All of them had something to say: the gallery where my dad showed his collages, the coffee shop we went to that day it was raining, the restaurant where we had dinner for his birthday, the place we went on Father’s Day, and on and on and on like that. The whispers were poignant and also joyful. In the doing part of my brain, they were memories I’d like to repeat, which then brought tears. In the still part of my soul, they were really special moments I feel lucky to have had. I know those things can go together. Salty and sweet, tang and bubble. Sigh. Still waiting.