It's a complex thing, grief, with sharp angles. I can be tracking along nicely along some line, feeling Dad recede in the rearview, comfortable with this new world where he is a fond, fond memory, and then I'm careening round some hairpin with a pain in my chest.

There's a giftshop in town I pass when I pop into the supermarket, and she always plays what I call 'Dad's music', though I like it too. As I politely looked through clothes that wouldn't fit me and earrnings that wouldn't suit me, I mentioned I liked her music - she was playing Harry Manx, whose style some call 'mysticissipi' because it blends blues with Indian music.

Dad, at the stereo, a month before he died.

I join her Spotify accidentally as I search for Hans Theeslink, who I think she'd like. We swap some music notes and talk about our Dads. I cry, she cries. We laugh. It's a moment, before other people walk in the shop and she's redirected.

At home I put on Manx's album 'Way Out East', an album which so very beautifully blends Indian ragas with slide guitar and blues. And there I am, swept back in time, to when Dad and I used to do a lot of yoga together. A lot of everything together really - listening to music, going surfing, talking. It's so odd to realise that those times are in a different compartment of my life now.

This album blends traditional Hindustani with the blues - honestly, it's sublime. This song reminds me of being in savasana with Dad - my heart hurts to think of it, breathing in unison with him, us both melting into the floor and infinite space to the sound. You'll get it if you play it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNZ5vAAwM5g

My parents went and saw him play years back - famously, the crowd was talking over his playing, which annoyed both Manx and my father, who told the people in front of him to pipe down, in probably no uncertain terms. Unfortunately he's only playing one sold out venue this far down this year, but I'd love to see him live.

All day I thought of Dad and I lying on the floor. Savasana is 'corpse pose' or resting pose - you could think of it too as a preparation for death, or unity into the infinite. In those last years he was already dying. I am too. We are all are. We have to be okay with that. I am, except for the missing him so. But in moments when I'm listening to his music, as I told the women in the gift shop, he's right here, with me.

In fact, to that end, I'd schooled myself on listening to his music, even though it had me in floods of tears often, in deeply sad days where only the big blue ocean could console me.

Perhaps this song explains things a little. It's the idea we're already moving toward that infinite merging, and the beuatiful, gentle, meditative blend of raga and blues kinda mirrors my grief with its sharp angles - one moment acceptance, next moment a deep ache. The refrain without the life we live - the grace of shared moments that continue even though he's long, long gone. My limbs ready for the final rest, his already turned to ash. It's not depressing at all, just kinda other worldly I suppose.

What is this that I can't see
Cold mist it's running all over me
Stretch my eyes, wanna stretch my limbs
Ain't that the way that death begins

It's kinda how you begin savasana - stretching your limbs, a practice for the final death.

Oh well
Old death, have mercy, death be easy now
Oh, pass me over now for another year
Another year

It's hypnotic, trance like. A traditional song rendered sublime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE2KgG6s6Io

It's the meeting of east and west, isn't it? Blues hurting, saying it plain,and raga asking us to hold the note and think of a larger order to things. That's how my grief speaks. Hurtful, yet aware of our larger place in the universe, the infinite. Listening to Manx is a somatic remembering. Breath, floor, sound, shared stillness.

So the last song feels apt as part of this reflection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ3YJQ8blQI

There's talk of mysteries
And places roamed by poets
Heaven and earth are meeting
And fallen tears best show it

Make way for the living
Make way for the living
Bright against a black sky
And the shadow of the moon
Make way for the living

Thinking no mystery should go
Unchallenged we get
Flowers bloom outside your window
For no one's sake and yet

Morning arrives so gorgeous
Like a great dog yawn
Somewhere on a back street
Night chose to become the dawn

I think of that beautiful dawn, the moon low over my town, the ocean rush, the cool air, the sun breaking like a egg. I get up from a corpse like sleep, wake up and stretch my limbs from the grief, get on with the day, choose to. Ash might return to ash but the blood's still thrumming in my hot wrists I dip into the sea.

I have these moments to remember my father, beautiful moments, but I can still get up from savasana, breath, fly under water, come up to the light.