December 8: sad days.

I woke up this morning to a message from Phil Brady letting me know that his dad, my Mr Brady, my 6th grade teacher an friend and mentor, was on his way out of this world. I'd known he was sick, and that his health was declining, but I procrastinated visiting him and had promised myself I'd go visit in the spring. I loved visiting him when I did it, it just took the tiniest amount of energy to actually make it happen, and I'd kept finding reasons not to extend that energy. And now it's too late. I will still enjoy spending time with his wife, but I'm so sad that I'll never get to see him again.

Before we left on this trip, I'd started to feel really anxious. Then I realized that one of the things making me feel so bad is that the last (and only) time I'd left the US with a plan to be gone for months, my friend Damina's little brother went into a coma and died. So I was really worried that someone was going to die while we were here! And it only took five days for that to happen. It's not that I lost someone from my daily life; I hadn't seen Mr Brady in a year. And it isn't someone close enough to even think about going home early for. But it is losing someone important, and being unable to go to the service.

It was the middle of the night in the US when I woke up so I couldn't just call my parents to talk about it, like I would have if we'd been in the same time zone. It  drove home how far from home I really am.

Also when I got the message, he was still around so there was a tiny chance of getting to video chat once before he left us. So I was a little on the edge of my seat for that possibility. It didn't come together, understandably, but Phil read a message I'd sent him, and I'm grateful for that.

Mourning can be so selfish. I mean, that's kind of its essence. The person you're mourning isn't there anymore, and death makes us face the finality of life that we so often overlook. So the above text IS pretty self focused. I've lost so many people that are, like, second tier people. Not people out of my daily life, and I'm not in their first tier group of people either, but still people who are super important. So I'm not trying to overblow how big my experience of this loss is, because he wasn't family, and we weren't super super close, and he has a ton of other people he taught and mentored who love him, but losing him is also not nothing, either. I loved him, and now he's not here, and I didn't visit him as much as I wanted to and could have when he was here, and now that opportunity is over forever. 

Mr Brady

After I got my tears dried up and pulled myself off the couch, we went out for a skate. We stopped by a bookstore on the way.

I was pleased to see that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book, We Should All Be Feminists, has been translated into Swedish

Bunkeberget, a gigantic skatepark inside of an airraid shelter

There's a vert ramp here, so I'll have to actually build some vert skills instead of just being thrilled that I can drop in and kick turn around. It doesn't have as much vert as Pier. It's smoother, so I slide on my kneepads better. But it's cement, so it isn't soft like it would be if they'd made it out of wood. Or rather, half of it is cement and the ends are wood. I ate shit on the seam the first time I went over it at too shallow of an angle. Lots to learn. Maybe by the end I'll carve over that hole in the pocket.

This is the walk down to the skate park from street level.

This is the entry door. I remember trying to look happy in this photo, but clearly none of that came out. A whole morning of sobbing definitely didn't do much for my selfie-game. I wonder what I'd have looked like if I didn't even try to look happy.

We stopped for bibambop on the way home. I love this restaurant, and the past few summers we've visited while they are summer closed. Being summer closed is a thing that happens in August. Swedes get so much vacation, and lots of them choose to take it in August, so lots of places are literally just closed for a month. It's great for the workers, but it sucks to go visit and have lots of your favorite places be summer closed.