Six Months

I didn’t think I could get through this pain of loss back in April.  Now it’s October. I have more good days than bad.My heart still feels like it has been crushed and hung with a heavy weight. On my bad days, I cry myself into a headache.

I’m proud that I have been fairly consistent with my work schedule and output with only a few mental health days here and there.The other week, I was a complete wreck at work and all my therapy tools weren’t helping. I just wanted my dad and not to be burglarized. That is a horrible side effect of being robbed. If mementos of loved ones are taken, you mourn for them all over again. My boss is awesome and told me to go home. I said, “Thank you. It has been too much” in gasps between crying.

That night, I decided to finally write to my dad. I did it via email and in the split second that I hit send to his old email address a dumb denial

thought came to me,” What if the email doesn’t bounce?” That would mean the corpse I saw back in April was an elaborate sculpture and my dad faked his own death for… reasons? Denial doesn’t have to make sense.

My mom and brother are wobbling through their grief. We know the holidays are going to be incredibly difficult so we have plans. I’m working from home for my birthday and staying at my mom’s afterwards. I’m not going to any big family gatherings because I went to a small gathering last month and that utterly wiped me out. It was the first time I saw most of the people since my dad’s memorial. Plus, there were so many dads there dadding it up. It had been a long while since I had a conversation that had the underlying thought of “what the heck is he talking about?”