6 months.

It has been half a year already since my dad passed away.

To be honest, I didn’t realize it until a friend asked. I wasn’t exactly keeping track. 6 months. 6 years. It doesn’t make much difference to me. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s gone and how my heart breaks a little at the thought of him.

But time has a way of healing, I suppose. And especially with the crazy times we’re living in now, I’m kind of glad he was spared from all of this. His illness and this viral pandemic wouldn’t have been a very good combo, what with all the treatments and hospital visits he had had to do.

On the bright side, I’m a bit more focused on learning to skate now, stopping by at the netball courts after work to get my moxis rolling. A promise I made to myself last year as I watched my dad struggle to walk again. The simplest things we take for granted when we’re young and healthy are the very things we literally have to fight for when life knocks us down on our knees.

If daddy could grip on his walker frame and slowly put one foot in front of the other with nothing but determination and a physical therapist  holding his waist belt for a bit of support, there’s no reason I couldn’t learn to skate.

I know. It doesn’t make sense. Neither does cancer. But here we are now and I am ever so slowly pushing myself to get better at facing my fears and learning to do something I never thought I could do simply because I still can. It’s liberating.

And like daddy, I wanna put up a good fight. He didn’t raise a quitter. A bit of a procrastinator, yes, maybe, but I like to go at at my own pace. Nice and sloooow.

I’m a fucking tortoise.