A Year Later: Random Thoughts

It's been one year since my dad died. I'm sad today, but the lead up has been the worst. Knowing this day is coming, that it has been an entire year, that we are actually fine and functioning, that I feel like we shouldn't be fine and functioning, it's all stressful. I mean come on! Someone died! You can't just go forward with life after that. Of course, it isn't all fine, but life goes on. And that's stressful too.

In a lot of ways, things are the same. I get up, feed the kids, tell them to go to the bathroom, feed them again, tell them to nap, feed them some more. Some days we go grocery shopping or do something fun away from the house. So that's all the same. But I don't talk to anyone except the kids until my husband gets home from work. And instead of saying "you should show that to papa" its "papa would have loved that." And my kids play games where their dolls have dead parents or siblings. And my son comes up with things to make me not be sad. So that's all different and new and hardly wonderful.

My mom died about 5 months after my dad, but today feels like her anniversary too. She wasn't the same. She tried to be, but they were so much a part of each others lives she couldn't really ever be the same. So this is the day everything changed. January 6. We knew the day was coming, and really, the change in the family happened when he was diagnosed a month earlier, but you can't really execute your "when my dad dies plan" until your dad dies. And we couldn't really jump into the "clean the house and get rid of it" thing because my mom, who lost her husband of 40 years, lived there and needed some time (my brother gave her a month, we were feeling generous!). The whole of 2016 was actually a super stressful shitstorm (interspersed with amazingly good things too!) so maybe the real anniversary will be a year from the closing of selling our old house when we can say "we made it a year since that horribly stressful year." But I guess the stress isn't ending, the consequences of the loss of my parents will never stop. We will just get more accustomed to living with them. So maybe there is never an anniversary for something like a death.