When the calendar turns to the most dour days of November, when the leaves have just been ripped from the trees, and that first gray barren visage reveals itself, stark and brutal and bare, the only place I’ve found to properly work as an escape is not some far-away tropical land, but the dim living room where I sit down for a daily meditation. 

Lit by a candle, which in turn illuminates the curling smoke from a Palo Santo stick, the darkness of November, and all of its absent, fallen leaves, pulls back from this little circle of respite. At the dourest hours of the year, when the sudden onslaught of the winter to come is standing just ahead of us – immovable, majestic, daunting, and mad – I breathe slowly in, and even more slowly out, and the breathing that has sustained me through the day now works to calm and still me. It is the magical movement of meditation, when the worries of the mind shift, with practice and patience into a realm of blank peace. Thoughts that once raced now walk slowly by, pausing to genuflect with acknowledgement, then going on their way, until the line of thoughts has dwindled to barely a trickle, and at last, to none at all – simple, sublime, and entirely full emptiness. 

Yesterday was a day in which the only thing to which I looked forward was my daily meditation. Maybe it was the barrage of non-stop office antics and interruptions, and the fact that I didn’t get out for lunch. (Whenever I fail to take a break at lunch, the day feels especially weighty.) Maybe it was seeing my Uncle for the first time in decades, and the way he so incredibly brought my Dad back to life in physical form, with the very same gestures and inflections and laughter. Maybe it was my Dad’s name being read at the mass for All Souls Day. Maybe it was just the heaviness of fall, and the chill that lingered in the air despite the sun. 

Whatever the reason or reasons, I eagerly anticipated my twenty-minute meditation. Gently striking the edge of a Tibetan singing bowl, and lighting a candle in this beautiful candle-holder made by our dear friend Eileen, I sat down on the floor and felt grounded in a way that only meditation provides these days. As the outside world burned, and oak leaves spun in gentle spirals down to the earth, I began the long and deep inhalations and exhalations that constituted the physical aspect of my meditation. My eyes closed, and in that darkness I felt the gradual clearing of thoughts. They traveled across my mind at first like they always do, but soon they dissipated. Practice helps that happen faster and faster, and within a few minutes I can usually find the plane of peace that is the basic goal of any meditation. 

On this day it was linked with a general feeling of sadness that’s been plaguing me as the days turn darker. I’ve been trying to embrace that sadness, to feel it as a proper and ultimately healthy way of grieving. I miss my Dad still. And always. I understand it won’t go away, and for the most part I don’t want it to; I am learning to be ok with that.