It was early, just a bit after 7 am that I woke from a short 4 hour sleep. We stayed up doing the wake for a long time almost until 3 am. Just letting the emotions develop, slowly letting go attachments and allowing early grief to happen. It’s been such a unique experience and indeed with time, even with just hours passing I could feel that I'm able to move - if not yet on - but further, forward. With every minute it became more clear and by the time I slipped into my bed dizzy from not sleeping I knew that all was going to be well. 

Then at dawn when all was still dark, the sky slowly turning brighter from dark blue and the stars still shining in the sky, I knew that I had to leave the house for my morning daily yoga practice. I needed to be out in the open. The weather was kind, it was a balmy morning, surprisingly warm for a mid november dawn. I had only my thin leggings on and a big jacket but was not cold at all walking under the early morning sky in my yellow leather shoes. 

It felt right to come out here, into the park and I found my spot all so quick, intuitively looking around where I needed to be. I have chosen a small hilltop from which you can look all around, watching the big clouds move ahead and looking down onto the small lake. 

I arrived at my spot and waited a bit, a little hesitant to proceed. I knew it would be difficult. I suspected that it would be emotional too. But I did not anticipate how it would be to breathe with life itself around me and in me that dawn. I took my arms up and above my head, palms meeting softly, left and right, coming together. Receiving my breath, allowing life in. It felt so big, so vast, all this life storming in, filling my body as if I was too small to hold it. I felt the vastness, this ‘oneness’ not as separate but as being one with it. As I was breathing, with every breath I could participate in it and in that oneness there was my father now too. 

The tears have bursted again as I took another breath but there was beauty too, so much beauty indeed. Following how we can unite with just a simple breath linked movement. And how all that is around me, the morning sky with these huge fast-pacing white grayish clouds, or the flock of starlings flying around graciously with momentum and the warm morning wind on my wet face is all one and I can be one with it. 

Every morning for my yoga practice if I wish. Meanwhile my father is permanently one with them. And what a beautiful place that is to be.

This time I had no bad feelings trying to capture the moment with my camera, it was an important one so it had to be done. It felt so fresh and relieving not having any extra pressure of guilt why I’m disturbing a precious moment. I wasn’t. I was preserving it.

And then as I was walking down my little hill my hands dirty and wet from the ground I met a little robin, so calm and so gentle looking at me for quite a while from just a meter distance. I never had such an experience before, our gaze locked without movements. It was just for a few seconds but it felt like a lifetime and it followed me for a while its bright chest glowing in the morning light. I didn’t think anything of it, just felt how peculiar that was. 

It’s now regular that the little robin comes for a visit. In the garden it’s hopping and flying up and down, sometimes quite close and never staying away for long. It might be a simple change that occurred here at the end of this year, and I don’t need to know more, but the little robin feels like a precious visitor after all.

With love, Hanna