Sunday, March 24, 2013

I saw the sign....

Well Happy Sunday world, it's been a bit of forever again since I blogged but I was inspired this morning/afternoon.....

Life has been going by pretty quickly again, a lot of changes at my job and a lot of activity in general, it's coming up on that time of the year where I end up reflecting on where I was 10 years ago with my dad.  It's INSANE to think it's been 10 years since that whole thing went down, feels like yesterday and 100 years ago all at the same time.  I have to say it helped me grow up and broke me down all at the same time.  Watching the strongest and most stable man you've ever had in your life physically and mentally break down due to brain cancer when you are 16 isn't what is supposed to happen, but who gets to choose these things?

All this had me thinking about signs, things that I remember seeing in my life that made me always stop for a minute but then I didn't give it a second thought.


yep that was the first thing I thought of........


My dad loved Meet Joe Black the movie about a man being followed by death in a human form of Brad Pitt.  The concept always completely freaked me out, but every time it was on my dad just had to watch it.  In the movie Sir Antony Hopkins is a ruthless businessman who loves his daughter and is trying to show death what real life is like.  There is a scene at the end of the movie when Hopkins gives a goodbye speech to his daughter, and it would always wreck me, I would put my head on my dad and just sob, and now it just clicks for some reason.  My dad could never accept that he was leaving us, could never formally say goodbye in any way, and that is something I am grateful for, but this obsession with this movie makes so much more sense now.

My mom found my house before I did, I was 24 and had only been in my job for around 6 months when my mom drove me through a newly developed neighborhood and was saying just for fun we should run into the model.  The thought of buying a house wasn't in my thought process and I kicked and screamed the whole way to the door, but when I went in, everything clicked, everything felt right, and I knew that was what I wanted.  I knew I couldn't afford it, so I put it out of my mind and went about my life, until another 6 months passed, I got my new job, a considerable raise, and suddenly the house was in my price range.  My mom dragging me is always a sign, she did the same thing with my prom dress.

My grandfather wasn't a big jewelry man, he wore his wedding ring, maybe a watch, but he was a simple man.  He loved me so much, and my whole life was such a great force of stability for me (which I didn't realize until he was gone) but he was very over-protective and smothering to my mother sometimes.  When we would go visit he would make my sister and I sit beside him, let us watch whatever we wanted on TV but just wanted to be with us.  About a month before my dad got sick I noticed my grandfather had this goofy looking colored bracelet on his wrist.  When I asked him about it he said it was a Chinese evil eye bracelet that my grandmother had ordered out of a magazine and it was supposed to protect him.  I was so enthralled that he immediately took it off his wrist and put it on mine, he wanted me to keep it on always, and I promised I would.  Little did I know then that I would need it to protect me, I still have it in the front pocket of my purse.

It's so weird to think about all of these things that happened that pushed me in the right direction.  Part of me wishes I was more religious for that freedom of putting my life into a higher beings hands and just letting go, but the cynic and the Virgo in me hasn't allowed that yet.  We will see, but I know I'm beginning to keep my eyes open, and jamming out to a lot of Ace of Base just in case.....

xoxo,
me