Another moderately quiet evening at home.. ‘only’ Max, Gabe, Mason Scott, Carl, Jessie, Dan and Chai in the house. Diane is at a book club meeting tonight. I like the fact that the house is hardly ever even close to empty.. It’s harder to be down when you have people to feed. Not that that was hard tonight. Our fiend Kristen brought over a delicious dinner. I worry that we’re getting spoiled now.. we never were particularly good about cooking for ourselves before Sam died so this seems like luxury. Gabe and I had some quiet time playing a game before bed which was nice. Folks are drifting off to bed now and I’m feeling a little down. I’ve had a busy couple of days at work and that hasn’t given me the time to think about Sam during the day. On top of that ,the last two mornings have been too cold to run which kept me form my morning commune with Sam. I find that if I don’t spend enough time grieving… no. that’s not the right word.. if I don’t spend enough time being with Sam in a day it catches up with me. It’s like some sort of congestion., . Being here in his room tonight makes it feel a little better.
I had another day of walking the halls of work and running into people I haven’t seen since Sam died. I’m learning that I have to plan about 20 minutes every time I walk out of my office door to allow for the hugs and concerned conversations I have with everyone I meet in the hall. The funny thing is that I’m finding this to be good for me.. and not an inconvenience at all. In my past life I was always running down the hall late for something and too busy to talk.. now I’m finding that I (usually) can’t rush by someone when they give me that ‘I don’t know what to say’ look. It slows me down and I like it. I’m also finding that it’s fun leaving my office door open so people can wander by.. I also find that I can’t multi-task as well as I used too.. which means I need to stop typing when someone comes in to talk.. Again it slows me down in a very nice way.. I can’t see how mindful people get any work down at all. J .. I had some very good conversations today in the hall.. Several friends said something to the effect of .. ‘you don’t look as bad as I expected’. It’s hard to try and live up to folks expectation of what a grieving father should look/act like. I can see it is hard for my friends to know what to expect.. I’m still ‘me’ in here.. just a sadder and maybe wiser version.: meet me 2.0.
I did allow myself one indulgence today. Diane had set me up with another Reiki session with our friend Marcy. If you haven’t done Reiki you may want to check it out.
It’s a form of Japanese body work that attempts to rebalance your body’s energy fields.. Two months ago I wouldn’t have been open to anything involving energy fields that you couldn’t measure with a voltmeter.. Now I’m finding myself open to all sorts of things. I’m finding Reiki to be intensely relaxing.. Both times I’ve done it I’ve had some really powerful images of Sam come into my mind. He always has that goofy smile…
Anyway.. it’s getting late and I should go.. See you in my dreams Sam.
-jc