E-motion, whiplash, then calm
~ trifecta of truths
Some days don’t just happen.
They crash in, rattle the furniture, and demand a toast.
And, in this case, are not the end of a complex weave of lifestyle and experiences, of closure of a chapter, or of the immediate and powerful relief, release of tension that as been beyond ‘cresting wave of the emotional flood’ magnitude for many weeks, a move, a departures/end, interim solutions and kind support from several incredible people.
And, learning something I know, but it’s so spectacular in the moment when it happens:
Sometimes, others recognize our best moments before we do.
Probably true of our worst moments too.
When storms pass, they leave behind wreckage and clarity.
Two days in a row of emotional upheaval, the kind that reminds you why relief is as powerful as pain.
Yesterday was a big “WOW” day.
Not flashy, not billboard-worthy, but meaningful.
Deep. To my toes.
The kind of day when something massive, long-standing, and burdensome finally slides off your shoulders. A several-years-long complication/upheaval and constant stress; resolved.
Something I’ll never unpack publicly, but some very few close friends know the cluster-fuck it was; I’ll bring them up to speed.
For everyone else, I’ll simply say, it was big.
It arrived by email very late in the day yesterday. It arrived exactly as it should have, with exactly the facts and numbers it should have, only 10 days later than it should have.
It arrived without apology or explanation from ‘never admit a mistake, never say sorry your sorry for what you put people through, lawyers’, without saying so much as ‘sorry, we messed up, we should have done this 10 days ago, and we are sorry for not even acknowledging your calls or emails’. Yeah - WTF!
As it turned out, the ‘fixer person’ inadvertently included another email in the string as evidence I’m not wrong in that assessment.
The power packing into that moment, it arrived at 4:02PM on Friday starting an August long weekend, however, not lost on me …
It was big. Monumentally big.
Relief doesn’t have an exclamation mark.
A long exhale, a quiet dinner out, a moment of remembering who I was before the heavy weight of it all pressed its crushing mass on my shoulders several years ago.
It’s not ‘over’, but its weight both shifted and was unweighted yesterday.
And last night, in that quiet, also came rolling back to me, late last night, the memory of another August-long weekend:
road trip with my dad, our last. Not an errand or to a medical appointment. Real journey. A few days in B.C. with him, bookended by celebration and golf. It was rich, understated, and unforgettable.
Time has this funny way of sharpening certain memories and smudging others.
That trip stands out not for what we did, but for who we were in that moment, father and son, sharing space and silence. And so many great laughs, confessions, admissions of how we felt - open, unrestrained with the only person alive who would understand - each other.
Oh, about these last two days?
They’ve echoed that same thunder of significance.
Personal. Emotional. Tethered to time and meaning.
And a ‘bonus surprise yesterday’, from inside yesterday’s Musing — One date I can’t ignore — I wrote something in passing. Like most storytelling, we write words that take us from one thought to the next, from paragraph to paragraph, because most words in most sentences aren’t the message, they’re the truck hauling the message …
But this phrase, as it turns out, provided a different and unexpected turn.
In the context of its paragraph, it was written as the truck, not the message. In the course of writing and polishing that column, I wrote it, read it, proofread it, and moved on.
A reader, friend, and fellow writer didn’t.
She caught it, spotted it, and recognized its magic.
Thanks, LG, yes it was Elgie, a longtime friend and longer-friend of Musings; a fierce writing talent, saw it and pointed it out - that line, right there, that’s something:
“Some dates don’t just show up. They arrive heavy with memory, with meaning.”
I didn’t know I’d written something worth noticing until someone I respect deeply told me I had. That’s a special kind of ‘WOW’, the kind that humbles you and fills you up all at once. Sometimes, the best thing we say or write is the line we didn’t realize we needed to say, and in this case, didn’t realize I’d said it …
Many people in my orbit have heard me say, ‘WOW, that's big news...’ is a phrase I invented, used for the first time about 23 years ago … in answer to a question from my 2nd ex-wife, “What should I say ….?” in a hotel room in Mississauga. Stay tuned for that story tomorrow.
P.S.: many thanks to AN, RH, BT, MM, SB, and LG … your spoken and unspoken support and your kindness and understanding has been beyond what I deserve or have earned. I hope can one day adequately repay you in kind, not every day, but when you need it most, I’ll be there for you as you’ve been there for me.
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