I love taking pictures, it’s a way for me to express my creativity without words, it helps me see the world differently and causes me to shift my focus.
In yesterday’s post I talked a little bit about how now that I am in the city I am back into my old habit of taking walks and snapping pictures with my iPod touch. Yesterday afternoon I took a walk with a friend around the Katy Trail in downtown St. Charles and also spent some time in Frontier Park.
We didn’t get very far because I literally stopped every few feet to take a picture of something pretty. It’s the perfect time of year for nature walks in Missouri, it’s not too hot, it is not yet cold and the leaves on the trees are just starting to fade to a pale shade of green.
Even though I didn’t mean to think about it, walking around town yesterday caused me to grow melancholy. As I snapped pictures and took in some familiar sites, I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had been in the historic area of St. Charles taking pictures.
It was in mid-March, right around the time my dad was hospitalized. Thinking about dad in the hospital only caused my mind to travel down that painful road. The what if road. The what if he’d had an alternative to his surgery, or what if he’d recovered from surgery.
When I sat down on a bench in Frontier Park, I began flipping through the pictures on my iPod. I was pretty pleased with my snapshots and closed out of the camera app when the date caught my eye: September 27, 2012. And then I realized that today, September 28 is exactly six months since dad passed away.
Six months. Then, as I often do, I played around with the numbers and dates in my head and found this connection: 3-28-2012: 3×2= 6. 2 taken from 8 = 6 . 12 divided by 2 = 6. Six months.
Even though being back in the city has made dad’s death seem a lot more real, I feel like it’s going to be more productive for my grieving process to be here. The silence of the city, the absence of my mother and sister to care for and the small reminders of what happened when dad was in the hospital before he passed away have hit me harder the past few days, but I know that after a while, things will get easier.
Even though today’s post may read a bit despondent, I feel better knowing I shared it with everyone. I know my situation may be different than someone else’s, but I don’t think my feelings are unique. It is my hope by sharing what I am going through I can help someone else by letting them know they are not alone. Grief is both universal and unique, we’re all connected by our ability to grieve, but each of our experiences with grief are different.
If you have any words of wisdom to share about grief, or just difficult circumstances please feel free to leave me a comment in the section below, or email me privately, via the contact page on my blog.
Amanda Bretz 