Hey friends,

I’ve missed you.

I wrote the post below, Septemberish last year but my fingers couldn’t quite find there way to the publish button. There’s been a few like that. But if 2024 is about anything for me, its about less holding back, saying yes more often and just seeing what grows. 

Sound alright ?

Five Minute Friday = Prompt word, five minutes, just write.

No over thinking, no over complicating.

This weeks prompt word: ABSENCE

Ours wasn’t an epic love story.

Not a stars colliding, run through the airport with music crescendoing, kind of love story.

But it was our love story.

And I miss it.

He did run though.

A good 20 metres down a busy Sydney road on dusk, to pick up two big terracotta pots I’d spotted discarded on the curb. The dirt was still in them and they weighed a ton I was told afterward. He was still white faced after I’d hollered PULLOVER !! out of nowhere on spotting them. He ran down the road and back up, twice in fact and heaved those pots into the truck. There were swear words involved. I still have those pots, they’re still going strong. Bless him.

And now our boy has just turned 20, and I think  how over the moon happy Ken was to be a dad, how he embraced fatherhood arms wide open with gusto, not quite believing he was actually getting a shot at this kind of joy. Me either. Still can’t. 

Kens birthday, September16th,  is hot on the heels of Fathers day and Eths birthday. 

I’m still sorry he’s missing these two getting older but then I can’t see what he sees, I can’t know how radiantly beautiful it may be there, so there’s that to remember.

Things I don’t remember are our last days under this roof as a family, our last time all together. I draw a complete blank.  Why couldn’t I at least had an inkling that these weren’t ordinary days at all. They were our last together between earth and heaven, thin and gossamy and holy. Days to remember. I would have said more, noticed more, sat more, cooked him something good more. I did all those things without the knowing but the poetic, seen too many movies, side of me wants last looks and light fading, memories and meaning.  Most often what we get though is raw and muddled and skewed sideways, real life I think is what they call it. And I wonder really is it any less holy.

What I do remember :-

Is us all together, years ago now but like yesterday also,  down the coast somewhere, squeezed around the little table in the caravan and Ethan making us laugh, really laugh,  blowing on his arm making fart noises that got louder and more musical the more we laughed at them. Stuck in my memory thank God,   not poetic, not lyrical, nothing you could set to music, but sacred all the same and  I smile every time I think of it. I remember  thinking at the time how good it was to see Ken laugh so hard and thinking to myself look at us here, happy, with these two miracle kids.

There were other times like it. Fun and silliness ran strong through Kens veins and I think it was the best of him.

I remember too, more than I want, the hard times and the hard years and the hard words. Too many I think.  Hard enough they about broke me in half  and  I’m not sure I’m entirely put back together yet. I wonder for the life of me why it had to be so hard and messy and broken, why he couldn’t just let us be happy. I still get angry about it at times. Yet as much as I grieve what could have so easy been but wasn’t, I can still remember and relive the joy of what was,  the sweet stuff, the laughs, the kindnesses, finding each other, making a life and a family. Yep  I remember the good days Ken, the gelato ice cream and ocean views, because none of us want to be remembered for our worst day or our worst behavior. You were, we all are so much more than that.

I read this not long after Ken died.

“Learning to love people in death, it turns out, is a lot like learning to love them in life. No one is perfect. No one loves perfectly. To mourn well is to hold together in the space of your heart multiple complex emotions
at once. Sadness, regret, anger, longing, nostalgia, all of these are holy feelings and must not be denied.
Honoring the memory of the one you loved doesn’t require you to idealize them. They don’t need your
patronization. To honor them means to love them because of and sometimes in spite of who they really
were. And to honor your own sorrow, you must love and accept yourself no matter the mistakes you’ve
made. One of the most powerful things about the gospel is that it teaches us people do not have to be
perfect to be loved, cherished, and grieved when they are gone. And I don’t have to be perfect to be
allowed to grieve. It is a gift to bear witness to the life of another.” from A Hole in the World by Amanda Held Opelt (from Episode 235 The Next Right Thing Podcast)

It is a gift indeed. So I keep his clothes in the closet a bit longer. Both Eth and Liv wear his shirts sometimes, another way of remembering that has a poignant but happy edge.

We tell his stories, we mark his absence by remembering he was with us  and we keep moving forward with and without him.

Thanks for reading friends xx