It’s funny – you can feel it when the bad energy is pumping even before you realize that’s what you’re feeling.

Today is Groundhog Day.  Which is great … except that two years ago tomorrow, John’s brother died.  And tonight, when my Dad came over for dinner, he shared that his dad, my grandfather, died on Groundhog Day.

Bubski died in 1979 – the same year I was born.  We just missed each other.  I used to think I could physically feel that sadness of missing him by just this much.  The stories I heard about Bubski (his nickname) were legendary.  I was sure that he would have loved me and spoiled me and been the best granddad ever.  But we just missed each other.  And that closeness – that near miss -haunted me as a child.

Now I wonder how much I’m like him – if his spirit is within me.  I dearly hope I am  like him -even if just a little bit – because he sounded wonderful and what a gift that would be.  I’m less sad and just grateful that his memory lives on with such love and vibrancy.

Life is funny like that.  How our perspectives change as we get older, as we gather more information.  I’m sad I never knew my grandfather.  I’m sad that I lost my mother when I was thirty-nine.  I’m sad about all the tough hits I’ve taken — MS, my first marriage, blah blah blah.  It all sucks.  Life isn’t fair.  And it certainly isn’t kind.  But my choice is how to react to that, how to frame it and sit with it.  How to hold the energy and then release it.

It can’t change the losses we’ve suffered.  But perhaps it can help us carry them.

Xox, g