Won't Sleep

 I don't want to go to bed. 

If I go to bed, I will wake up. And when I wake up, I will have to go to my dad's funeral. 

I'm not ready to bury my dad. 

I've been up working on his Life Sketch for a few hours now. How do you sum up a person's life in a short few minutes? What are the important parts? What should be left out? What are the most important themes? How do I distill him down to a few stories and an over-arching theme? 

And what would he want me to say? I don't want to let him down. But I don't think he would ever think that. I just want to do right by him. 

But it is also too soon. I don't have the wisdom of distance yet. It's been interesting how things have become sweeter. With his death, weaknesses are transformed into endearments. Things we used to tease him about now seem like the tenderest things. And we all are wondering and grieving that we didn't appreciate him enough. His good qualities have crystalized into a crown of glory. We all see him more clearly now that he is no longer here.

But I don't care so much about how great he was, though he was great. I just want my dad to talk and laugh with me. For us to talk about something interesting, argue a little over politics, or go work on something in the shop. Or make breakfast together and chat. 

Dad would want me to go to bed, not stay up all night in denial. He would want me to Be Wise.

Weary

Man, I'm tired. 

I want to post on social media how exhausted I am, physically, emotionally, socially, creatively...but I can't because I don't actually want the people I know in real life to know how much real life has got me down.

Parents getting old and sick is hard. Kids growing up and going through puberty and the teen years is hard. Babies not sleeping through the night, husbands with jobs they hate, and then there are the many, many hours I work.

And I'm in that spot where the things I would usually do to rejuvenate me are not things I can do because of the crushing deadlines of things I have to do is glaring at me so intensely that I am frozen to my bed. I want to cry, but I'm too tired. I want to sleep, but I'm listless. I'm also hungry.

And so I write. My laptop is open, so I am work-adjacent. I'm just one window away from working on some of those crushing deadlines.

And I think about...nothing. I just sit here and breath. And it's ok to not have anything brilliant to say about the eternal state of doing. 

Did you know that many other languages don't have the word "do"? And when you think about it, "do" is just a broader, unspecific word for action. It's really a pointless verb. It is entirely dependent on context for meaning. It's much better to just use the specific verb. But it just got me thinking that maybe part of the English-speaking world's obsession with productivity could be tied back to this word "do." We have to do just to do. In Spanish, you actions are expressed in specific and intentional verbs, not just general busyness. I could do with more intentionality these days, not so much running to and fro with vague doing.