Trading out worries....

Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of my father's death.  I'll just let that sit there for a moment.

One of the things that has been most unexpected for me during the last year has been how often I discover that in some dark recess of my mind, I'm still gnawing on a concern that is completely obsolete, with his death.  For years, for example, I've done the math on his age and wondered if he would live to see my son's bar mitzvah, and prayed that he would.  One evening as we were practicing Hebrew, I realized that I had very subconsciously just calculated Dad's age at Noah's bar mitzvah again, and it only became a conscious thought when I realized that this was no longer needed.  Dad won't be there.  That's pretty clear.  I can stop doing that now.  I felt slightly lighter, as if some piece of existential dread had been quietly let down to the floor from my shoulders.

A few minutes ago, I read an article about a family escorting the body of a veteran home for funeral, and the escort included the deceased's wife and parents.  A fleeting image of "what if it were my husband" went through my mind, and the realization that my own parents wouldn't be there for me hit me like a ton of bricks.  Of course they won't.  My mother has been gone for over 40 years, and Dad for a year.  And yet it came as a complete surprise when a little bit of weight went back to my shoulders with this new vague worry.

I wonder if it's necessary for these assumptions to be brought into the light of conscious attention, to have them dispelled.  I had hoped that it would all be letting go; now, I'm beginning to conjecture that there's some kind of law of conservation of worry.