grief pt. 2

Today is January 28th, 2024.

Last Sunday, January 21st, I realized it was exactly 3 weeks into the New Year.

I realized after I signed the papers to sell my dad’s house.

In 3 weeks, my dad went to the hospital, got 3/4 of a diagnosis, had our last meaningful conversations, wrote his will, signed over his house and car to Zac and I, moved him to a nursing home. He stopped eating and drinking, stopped being lucid, became unresponsive, passed away. Zac and I planned his funeral, we had his service, we went through all of his things. We paid off his mortgage, started an endowed scholarship in his name, and I came back to Columbia with basically everything out of the house or organized so we knew where everything else was going. And I signed the papers to sell his house.

And now it’s January 28th, exactly 4 weeks, one month, into the New Year.

I’m both exhausted and overstimulated. I don’t want to keep living the same life that I was before, and yet I don’t want anything to change outside of what he knew my life to be. I both want to be distracted and want to only think of his voice and words he said to me so I’ll never forget. I want so badly to finally be unpacked and my house to be cleaned and organized again, but I can’t stand the thought of going back through everything again. I want to make him proud, but I don’t want to do anything or accomplish anything without him here to go through it with me. I’m afraid of how long it will take to find my new normal, and I’m afraid of the new normal itself.