I’m still feeling it, People.

I think it usually is the day after the day after that we feel it. By then we’ve had time to come down and process.

I found myself all day trying to fight what my body really wanted — sleep. Fading away into a nothingness. Most of the time, I feel guilty not doing. Except when it’s “allowed” — like on the weekend.

Otherwise, I have a hard time unplugging. There’s always something, isn’t there? Something to clean, something to finish, to organize. It’s never ending. And while I see this, it’s very difficult for me to stop. To allow in the not doing.

Yet another reason I’m looking forward to Paris — it will be my time to truly unwind. To not think, not do. To lose myself in Van Gogh and Picasso and Hemingway. To sit in the gardens of the Palais Royal and read. Or maybe take a nap on a bench. Eat five too many Nutella crepes. Sit in churches and meditate for hours. Take a yoga class. Oh, and babysit TC, the biggest thing of all — trust me, peeps, he is going to be one heck of a handful.

And, the other part of this Aftermath … or maybe the real, main part … it is Gpa. How dearly I miss him. How much I can truly appreciate our relationship now that he is gone … isn’t that how it goes … we realize the magnitude of what someone has been to us when they are no longer here.

We can try to appreciate, to be thankful, but we gain a new perspective from this vantage point that we cannot conceive of otherwise.

He loved me in a way that I needed, that building you up bigger than you are, of being able to see things in me that I still cannot see. That love is hard to lose, although, I know it is not “lost” … what a drag this physical to non physical stuff can be! A true pain in the ass.

How can I know something with such certainty yet struggle this much with it?

Work in progress. Always. All things. Thank you for being on this journey with me.