The Chaos of Healing

This is not the next entry I had planned and certainly not what I expected to arise on our trip. The Synchronicities were too much not to share. They feel too real not to put into words.

It started out as small moments. The song on the radio, the same one we would dance to at the Inn. I caught myself swaying and two stepping around the garage as I finished packing our camping gear. My daughter then helped me get the cargo bag in place on top of my SUV with rachet straps. Realizing we didn’t have long enough ones, she declared “I’m not my Papa’s granddaughter for nothing, I’m going to Cowboy rig this to work” And she did, she tied them together and secured the load. I could feel the pride beaming for her and if he had been here, he would have patted her on the shoulder – the simple gesture my father used to tell you good job.

We made the journey and had camp set up, the girls and I sitting around the picnic bench. Without any prompting my two oldest start reminiscing of times they spent with their grandfather. How he would wake them up before the sun had fully come over the mountain and simply say – “It’s time”. They knew what it meant, they would pull on their boots and follow him out to the pasture. They would start pulling weeds, shoveling a path for water to flow to the orchard and anything else he would set them too. He would follow up with.

They laughed as they told me about how he would have scoped out the neighbor’s yard where the water pump for all the houses, and had the spot marked with and X. He would get them up and have them sneak over with him, army crawling under the fence. He told them the mission was to help him get it unclogged, that if they wanted the pond filled up and water running, they had to help “But don’t tell mom”. They played lookout as he worked. He always had popsicles in his toolbox for them, and after the job was done and they successfully made it back to the ranch, he would drive them to the little store and buy them ice-cream, letting them ride in the bed of the truck “If your mom knew, shed kill me.” The girls laughed and said as much as they would drag their feet and act like they didn’t want to, they loved it. They loved how they had a real childhood, playing outside and working on a ranch. It was fun because it was with him, and he always paid them in treats and ended the day with playing cards.

We arrive at the next leg of our trip, where we are setting up as vendors. As I’m unpacking products I heard someone yell “Cowboy, we need you to help move this trailer” and the man that answered the call was tall, skinny, dressed in all black with a cowboy hat upon his head. My heart stopped for 3 beats, and I had to hold my tears for just a moment. My father’s alias was Cowboy because he hated his first name. No one called him anything different. Over the next few days, I got to know this man as he helped out at the event, checking in on me and the children. He instantly had the vibe of my dad, and I caught myself finding the similarities. He has the energy and thirst for life my father carried prior to the drugs.

I can’t help but notice all the little ways he showed up over the last week. Maybe it’s his way of cheering me on, maybe he’s watching over me. Maybe it’s his way of apologizing, maybe he wants me to know I’m not as alone as I feel sometimes. Hearing my daughters reminiscing about him, this random character who goes by the same nickname… it all pulled on my heart, but the grief felt different. I wasn’t met with the stabbing pain of him being gone, but instead a sense of the beauty he left behind.

At the end of the day, I get to choose what it means. There is no right or wrong. Multiple things can be true at the same time. I deserve to look back with love. I deserve to remember the beautiful alongside the painful. I recognize the good without pretending the bad never existed. I choose to take the good and leave the rest.

Grief isn’t something we can hold in our hands, and healing is never linear. It comes in waves, and you never know when the tide will pull you back out to sea – or gently return you to shore.