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My dad died 8 years ago. He was sick, but it was also unexpected. He had recently been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. And at his diagnosis, his doctor assured my mother when your kids Google this disease, they’re going to see a 5 year life expectancy. That’s old information.
My father died 2 years later.
I’m the baby of five — we’re all spread out across the US. It was New Years Eve, and my mom had just texted the kids’ group chat with a pretty grim update. Not a one of us responded.
We didn’t know what to say.
We didn’t know what to do.
My husband came home from work and found me sitting numb on the couch. I gave him the update and he asked why I wasn’t on my way home. We were living in Charlotte at the time — my parents were in Raleigh.
I don’t know what to do, I confessed to him. No one has made the call. Not only did we kids not respond to my mom’s message, we didn’t contact one another, either. I think we were all just stuck in this state of inaction. Like, is this really happening?
I don’t want to make the call, go home and have this be nothing, I told him.
What my husband said next, I’m fairly confident all five of us kids are thankful for.
Make the call. If you all go home and it’s nothing, then you had a nice visit with your family. If you don’t go home and it’s something, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
There it was. We needed someone else to make the call — to tell us what to do. It’s a strange place to be in, smack dab in the middle of a life-altering moment. You think you’d know what you’d do. But the moment feels much different once you’re in it.
So, I called my big sister, the oldest. She was at work but seemed to be in the same stuck state that I was in. I think we have to round up the troops. Form there, she called the others. And there it was, the beginning of the end set into motion.
My father was sent home on hospice. He slipped into a coma shortly after. And he passed twelve days after I called my big sister and asked that we all go home.
The next day, my sisters and I sat in a funeral home with the most delightful funeral director you’ll ever meet (shout out, Heather!) making arrangements and picking a casket. My father was set to be buried in a veteran cemetery, so we didn’t have to worry about choosing a a plaque (like headstones made in bronze), so that was at least one decision off our plate.
The first few days that followed were a total blur of familiar faces, warm embraces and those deep belly laughs that only surface when you’re reliving a hilarious, heartwarming memory.
But then reality sets in. You’re figuring out finances and passwords and death certificates, canceling membership and figuring out what’s next?
And then it was all over. I was hanging my black dress in the back window of my car and making the drive back to my house. Back to reality. Back to normal. Except nothing, nothing, was normal.
There’s a shift in your reality when you lose a parent. I wasn’t particularly close with my dad. But even still, the world is altered. Your family dynamic is permanently changed. And it’s a change no one, for whatever reason, can properly articulate.
My family is no stranger to loss. Big loss. Painful loss. And yet, this was different. It wasn’t just a loss, it was an obliteration to the family unit I’d known my whole life.
In the years that followed, we sold my childhood home. My mom bought a house of her own and moved in by herself. After a lifetime of chaos and noise and partnership, suddenly, there was a new quiet life in a brand new house.
A house I’m not sure will ever feel the same as home.
I was 29 when my dad died. He missed my 30th birthday. My mom’s cancer diagnosis. The birth of my son. Life. He’s missed a whole hell of a lot of life.
And yet, our lives keep going. Back to normal. Except nothing is normal.
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