‘Time flies’ and my Chica finishes Year 6 and heads off to ‘big school’ in September.
She’ll be making her own way in, which means my twice-weekly walks to junior school with her will cease; something we’re both acutely aware of.
A grieving process has already begun – it’s out in the open.
“I’ll miss walking in with you, Dad,” she says, holding my hand.
I concur, a bit of a lump in my throat.
No use denying the human experience here: it’s sad.
We’re sad.
We feel it: the love that sits beneath all sadness.
🥺
These walks feel like a precious, ever-dwindling resource I’m clinging on to, like the last few sips of water on a hot day.
And yet this exact same thing, in the past, has seemed like a chore. Something I had to get through to the other side of, in order to carry on with my life.
And so there’s something there, isn’t there?
- A reminder that it’s not the situation we’re experiencing, but the thought-generated image of the situation. And that changes all the time.
- A reminder that we don’t ‘use’ this understanding to go into denial. Just because it’s an illusion, doesn’t mean we don’t throw ourselves into it whole-heartedly. (Quite the opposite – we know we’re safe to do so! Feel all the feels, fully!)
- And a reminder that there’s some truth to the saying, “Live every day as though it were your last.”
Because now I know that soon there won’t be any more of these walks, I kind of wish I’d pretended, back when it felt like a chore.
💝
Giles