This line from Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is very apt.  I am sometimes up. I am sometimes down.  It is pretty hard to know from day to day, or even hour to hour which I will be.  I don't want to beleaguer the point with you all, so I have been a little quiet.  But this is my blog, so I am going to take you on a little bit of the roller coaster with me.

Yesterday I was sad.  I went to Dad's to get a few things and wasn't really ok with that.  I have been before and it wasn't such a big deal, but yesterday it got to me.  I think the biggest surprise is that for the last 15 months I have imagined how it would go, how Dad would die.   I worried and schemed about how we would handle it.  I wondered how I would get through.  And there are times during every day now that I think back on the week of July 13.  On making phone calls.  On holding hands.  On Dad.  And it catches in my throat every time I realize - this isn't my wondering.  This is my memory. I really can't wrap my mind around it.  I know how it ended.  This is my memory.

Today, I had a happy moment.  I walked out of school after picking up the girls, and walked through a courtyard at their school.  This year we found a video we had of Dad in that courtyard after the girls' music show.  The video was from a week before he went on the trip to the Navajo nation - that was the trip he started having trouble on.  The video was from a time where we still had years left, a whole future ahead of us.  We were laughing and carefree. And today, I swear I could feel the space where he was.  It was like there were pockets in the courtyard where the air was different, but it was a very good different.  It made me very happy. Almost like being hugged by the air, warm and heavy under the dark, cloud filled sky.  I hope no one was watching, because I spun around like an idiot, and hugged back. 

Sometimes up. Sometimes down.