I know our human capacity for adapting to life’s changes are truly endless. And I know in my heart that each passing day will be a shaving less off of this monumental carving of sadness; but right now feels like we might never be happy again. My dad taught me to always accept and embrace the next life challenge with an open heart and head. I just didn’t fully factor in all these chalkboard dry and empty feelings that adhere to us like a gluey sadness-suit lumbering along for the journey. Why you gotta be so lame, Grief…why?

Death, divorce and moving, apparently top as the most stressful events in life. I have not been divorced, so that is not something that I can speak to and if you asked me today I would be happy to move house everyday of every month if it would just bring him back, healthy and whole again. The finality of it all is just so unbearable. We are not the first family to lose someone so loved and we certainly will not be the last. If you still have all of your someone’s to love, hug them tighter today and don’t let ugly words slice their way in before saying words like “I love you.” But most importantly make sure that they know it, everyday, by your actions just incase you don’t get the opportunity to always say the tiny words.

Stress feels like a disease that runs throughout the body; like that ink they inject into your blood stream to do certain scans and tests so they can see what all of your inside bits are up to. (Seriously, if you have never had that done count yourself as lucky, that stuff is vile. A big old icy vial of vile.)
If stress is a disease then all of this sadness must be a symptom; like sneezing is to a cold. The sadness fills up our human container and leaks out in tears and sobs when we get too full. My container is obviously the size of a thimble with the capacity of the ocean. (I really hope red puffy eyes and snot are in fashion this season...) Mum and Trudy are absolute wells of grace and have the ability to function remarkably well on very, very full vats of sadness; their strength keeps me from falling head first into my own.

I am proud to say that I learned nothing about holding onto sadness and festering the disease of stress from my dad. He simply is not a sad kind of guy and never lost sleep to the mechanical talons of stress. In fact, I don’t think he ever lost sleep to anything, that guy really loved his zzzzz’s. He could pretty much fall into a deep sleep almost on command.
Life lessons were to be learned from, crushed and then stacked into the archives of experience, no amount of tears will ever undermine all the foundations he taught us to build. (Except perhaps that time he put too much acidity into the pool and while it glowed a violet hue, he said we could swim anyway and our blonde hair turned slightly green. Mum was not impressed.)

This is us all together (yet apart) championing him on Monday night right after he left us; because he had to go be whole again. Cheers to you, dad, I can imagine you being pretty happy seeing everyone have a tailgate party up in the hospital car park. The ‘C’ in Craig stands for ‘classy’.

His lust for life and the ridiculous was contagious and no amount of sadness can whittle that away. This video is some very typical, Jim, spinning some tale of bullshittery beads of wisdom.

so much love.