We will all celebrate him silently and out loud, in our hearts and in our laughter. We said a final farewell yesterday and put him to rest, around his home, with an explosive send off that he would have loved every last bit of. It was perfect.

I think we have all felt something very special with and around us all, since he left. Whether it is simple energy, constant thoughts, love, light or just another symptom of our grief to make the memories and past joy resonate as being that much sweeter. We filmed the cannon being fired and before the ignition was even lit, Alex noticed a flashing glow across the base of the screen in the slowed down replay of the video. Science and logic can throw around words like simple tricks of light or a technical video artefacts, but the unexplained made us relish how little we really know for sure, and perhaps somewhere and somehow he was there with us, saying “hi”.

Jim was the patriarch of this family, and his ashes were scattered all over the property he made into a home. With love from the hands of the people and the many lives he helped to shape along the way. We all turn back to dust and the humbling reality of that makes me want to try to be the best human I can be, and try to obliterate everything tedious in life that doesn’t directly facilitate that.

I left, again today – from swelter back to snow, it is -20c here today and my skin is on strike – back to my life that feels like it’s been on pause since my phone rang around 10:30am on Tuesday, November 26th, 2013. My sister’s voice on the other end of the line, saying the words that nobody ever wants to hear, in a call that should never have had to been dialled; “Dad has been in accident.” The most insane and reality negating ride started for us all that morning. Words can change everything too quickly.

I have tried, for my sanity, to chronicle much of it on here in this blog; but in truth the savage unfairness of the whole situation is not something that I can apply logic to, and I probably never will. The inner conflict of goodbye seems so much more pressing, since coming to terms over these past few months, with how very final we all potentially are. I am not sure when I will be back again, but the daily hi, hello, how are you, I love you, will be my new habit. We are not together but are never really apart.

Trudy is left with the task of continuing life and family, while learning to make all this unfamiliar fit back into everything that looks exactly the same. The plants, the dogs, the fish, the grass, the house, the pool, his orchids, are constantly hungry for attention. She waters his orchids and her cheeks, every morning. It’s going to be the little mundane daily tasks that sting with the reminders of loss. He loved his orchids and they loved him.

Mum is left with a same but different house. I hope that seeing him in every detail – some way more ridiculous than others (hey there, train track installed around the verandah ) – will fill her eventually with peace and happiness. I can’t imagine losing a life long love, it must take a rocket-ship of strength to make good out of all the bad. Luckily she is a woman blessed with the strength and support of a fleet of rockets. NASA and the entire Russian space program could learn a thing or two from her. To the moon and back, mum. To the moon.