The last week was special in many ways. The beyond earthly beautiful funeral of my wife’s dad moved me a lot and has left a big impression in me. There was something very honest and beautiful in the way his life was celebrated and the way his afterlife was prepared, and I feel honored to have been a part of it and have felt my father-in-law’s presence ever since. And although our son probably does not understand that his grandfather is dead, he knows that something is different and has been talking about his granddad a lot every day.
A few days after the funeral my wife went to Tokyo for work and me and my son was spending the first full night by ourselves. With my wife still breastfeeding him every night we were a bit nervous how he would react when there suddenly was no milk to be had, but some warm cow’s milk before bed and then a dad singing twinkle twinkle little star over and over again made the trick and if it was not for a terrible thunderstorm I believe we would have had a very good night’s sleep. As it were my little one woke up at five and did not want to go back to sleep so I tried to wake up as well, making breakfast for us while still feeling half asleep.
With such an early start, why not make the most of the day I though and went to start the washing machine that I had prepared the night before, removing some toys that my son had managed to put there since. I remember thinking that maybe I should check more properly for unwanted items but the tiredness took the better of me and I pressed start and went downstairs to try to convince our son that we should have a little early morning rest on the floor together; for him it meant sitting down on my head instead. When the washing machine was ready we went upstairs and found that there were pieces of paper on all of the clothes. As it turned out, I had missed my son’s number one favorite book among the clothes, and it was now a wet bundle of pages with what had been airplanes, trains, cars and other vehicles.
During the half hour it took to clear the paper from the clothes I had plenty of time to wonder why on earth I did not check the machine properly before staring it as well as plenty of trouble keeping my son away from his washed book. But by the time my wife came home, the laundry was clean, our son was sleeping and I had managed to wake up and start to feel like a human being again. And when our son woke up and saw his mom, he happily acted like she had not been gone at all. I so wish our son could experience that with his grandfather as well.
Share this post