Summer

I’m sitting on a cottage porch. It is the beginning of July and the beginning of the summer holidays. The wind is rushing through the leaves and the lapping of the waves against the shore and boat sounds peaceful. A perfect time of the year, except that the air is quite cold and I haven’t been able to enter into the joy of it all. Usually the beginning of summer holidays, or a road trip, or the sight of a boat on a lake, sets in me a spark of joy and child-like excitement. Not this year yet. I haven’t been able to enter into it. This year is not the same.

My school year ended prematurely on Tuesday June 16 at 3 pm when I received a phone call that my father was killed in a tragic car accident. It was an incredible blow. Although, over the last few years of watching my dad get older, I realized that he isn’t always going to be around and wondered how I might feel about that. I never expected this blow. I thought maybe that he’d get older and older and we’d all help to take care of him and that maybe he’d die of old age or of some sort of illness. That he’d abruptly be killed in a car accident is not something any of us was expecting. Does anyone ever? And so after a few weeks of intense emotions I’m finding that I’m not feeling much of anything else. So I sit here on the cottage porch and am trying to keep warm and know I’m enjoying it even if it’s not the same.