midwife

It's seven years now.

He writes: I don't think he could have had a better midwife.

And warmth fills me and I smile and I respond yes, thank you, it means so much.

I don't cry. I'm not overwhelmed. And that is a sign how far I have come. I know that it is true and he didn't have to say this to make me feel whole or at peace. But the fact that he did still does change a lot. It takes away some of the anxiety I have felt to go to his hometown. To be where all the people live who loved him so closely and who wondered who that person was he was with when he passed.

Because while I personally feel at peace there is still perspective and dynamics and questions and the last rest of doubts and fears. It's not a static kind of mental state you achieve: 'be at peace'. It's like a dance, a movement, to be on this side now, alive, to later also pass. 

It is true, Dad, it is true, what you said when I was broken in a million pieces, howling through the paper thin walls of the tiny quiet temple guest house that tried to shelter me after experiencing what surely should have been impossible: The future determines the past.