Fire & Salt

Today is the very special day for me. It’s the day I honor a year of my dad’s passing. A full year. I just sit here. Outside. At night. Under a tree. It’s a full moon out. Barely any wind blowing. I think about it and it really doesn’t feel like a whole year. Feels like yesterday. I’m in the same spot where I received the news from my uncle.

Ever since that day, I haven’t had the time to sit down, reflect, and actually grieve. There’s always something happening. Work to be done. Money to be made. Attention to be paid. There’s always something. My writing has been on pause and it’s not because I’m finding it difficult stringing words together. Being able to write my 2025 year review isn’t about remembering what happened during the year, but how they made me feel. Baring your heart. To not give my true self is to rob myself of me.

As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man
- Psalm 27:19

I don’t have grief figured out. I don’t have heartbreak figured out at all. Yet, I just have to keep going. What choice do I have? I chose this path that I am on because it is one that is for me as I am for it. It’s the path I am committed to. It gets rocky but it’s the path. Pain changes a man. So do fire and salt.

They don’t destroy. They change the form of things. Fire to a farmer would mean the loss of the next yield, yet, gives the soil richer life and structure. Fire to a house would mean it will be razed to the ground, yet, you get an empty lot where you can build something new. Fire to iron would change its shape, making it malleable. Iron is still iron. Fire being good or bad, happens when we try to impress our emotions onto it. Fire is still fire, just as salt is to food. Salt can easily have food from bad to good, to great, to inedible. Salt being a rock is as fascinating a fact as the taste it provides.

What is grief to me? What does losing both parents mean to me? What does it make me? How does it change my form? I don’t have the answers. I do know for sure that it made me realize what matters to me. How much I can’t allow myself to take anything for granted, like it’s given. Every single question is the greatest question to ever be asked.

I can see, I can hear. I can taste. I can feel fear. I can feel happiness. I can get bruised. I feel pain. I feel grief. A lot of grief. I also feel gratitude for it all.

I don’t have this life stuff figured out. Far from it. Do you? I am yet to meet someone who really and truly has it all figured out. Even Julius Caesar, a man with a calendar month to his name, was stabbed 23 times by his own people.

It can be difficult to channel my drive, knowing that I have no one specifically thinking of my wellbeing. It may not be the case, but it certainly does feel that way. Who is really going to look at me and tell me “I’m proud of you. You’re doing good. Good job. Keep going”? What am I doing it for? For what reason do I wake up in the morning to run 3 laps? What reason do I keep my head low and work hard? A hope for a brighter future is all I have. That things will get better. I don’t know if they will. But surely, if I keep on believing, it would. And that’s the best I can do, to the extent of my power. Of course, some days don’t feel that way. Some days feel heavy with pain and sorrow. The kind only God can console me of. But that doesn’t stop the world from turning.

Do I have the right answers? I most certainly do not. I can’t ask them for advice because they’re no longer here. All I can do is my best and figure it out as I go. I’m here to do as much figuring out as I possibly can.

I know they would want that for me. That I can be certain of.

There’s still no wind.