Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. ~Henry David Thoreau

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Seven weeks tomorrow. Forty Nine days. Fifty days ago he was still here. I miss my dad. People move on, as they should, I get it. I have to navigate this path, this uncharted territory, without a map or a compass. But the landscape is about to shift, just as I begin to get my bearings. I feel sort of like Humpty Dumpty after the fall…held together by scotch tape. It’s a f*king hard journey, losing someone to suicide… some days I think repression is easier. Swallow it, put your head down and plow through it. If only I were built that way. I’m a daughter missing her dad, struggling to find a place to file his struggles at the end of his life, and the suicide that took him. My brain keeps giving me an automated response.

File does not exist, please try again.

So keep trying I will, amidst packed suitcases, goodbyes, and a seismic shift beneath my feet, I take two steps forward, one step back, and forward again. That is the only way to do it, the only way I know. Even when my knees threaten to buckle….

And like the refrain from a book I read with my daughters when they were little, I simply must keep reminding myself of this…

I can’t go over it
I can’t go under it
I can’t go around it
I simply must go through it…

Uncharted, unknown, unthinkable, unimaginable, at times unbearable…
But not unendurable.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart. ~Julien Green