remembering Grandpa

Love.  Friendship.  Vitality.  Health.  What more could a person ask for from life?  These are the words and the questions in my mind as I sit here meditating on the seeming finality of death.  My Grandpa passed away yesterday.  He was 89 years old.  He had plans to go to Florida this past Monday with his brother to play golf.  Instead we're heading to Iowa on Friday, to wish him a last farewell and prayers for a peaceful journey.

I am conflicted.  I am overwhelmed with sadness for my loss, but extremely grateful that I had as much time as I did, with this person who taught me so much... perhaps most importantly, how to love the people in my life, how to be strong and how to be there for them (with a smile), no matter what twists and turns they encounter along the way.  I guess we learn by example, right?

My Grandpa was a good man; patient, caring and kind.  He was never angry, a trait I (unfortunately) didn't inherit.  He always had a joke, a laugh and a song to sing.

I don't feel like anything I'm saying does justice to the memory I have of him.

When I learned he was gone I called my younger brother and his wife, and then I fell into supta baddha konasana.  It just felt like the right thing to do.  I set up my mat so I could soak up the sunlight coming through the window.  Reclining bound angle pose is incredibly restorative.  I leaned back on a bolster to help open my heart.  

I don't know how to deal with grief, how to handle loss.  Luckily my amazing babe is here with me, forcing me to be present instead of focusing on the past, reminding me that life is good, and that life moves on.  I recently read that grief manifests itself physically, so I'm planning on meeting it head on.  There will be lots of heart opening yoga in my future.  :)

After October

My October Yoga Challenge went well.  I didn't do yoga every day that I wanted to.  I didn't make it out to as many classes as I might have liked.  But all in all I consider it a success.  It was a learning process!

Now it is November, and time to take the things I learned in October and integrate them into my daily life.  I need to remember to set goals, but to have some flexibility when my life is pulling me in another direction.  The important thing is to keep my focus so I can come back to them.  With my baby it really is important to remember to take each day at a time.  There's no telling from one day to the next whether he will be teething, crabby and only napping for 25 minutes, or whether he will be my happy, playful little dude, napping for 2 hours and leaving his mama with plenty of time to finish her work on her job and still have time to work on her body, health and mind.

In October I spent a lot of time thinking about how to live more like a yogi.  I meditated on how to better treat the world and the people around me, and how to live my life with gratitude.  I just started reading Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and plan to read Green Yoga by Georg Feuerstein and Brenda Feuerstein next.  I've also started following some blogs about how to green my life, and I'll write more about that soon.

At the beginning of the month I promised myself a reward if I completed the challenge--a new yoga mat.  So although it didn't go exactly as planned, I consider my October Yoga Challenge a success.  In fact, I think it actually was even better than I could have expected, just in different ways.  So I'm looking for a new mat.  Yeah!!