What's the Point?

Please respect these dark thoughts as I process my dad’s death.

Life continuing without Dad is senseless. To match the drastic change in his life, I want mine to change. I dreaded coming back to the same apartment. The apartment where I lived when Dad was alive. Now I’m in the same place, but Dad is gone. There’s no balance.

Before Dad died, I tried moving items around my place to change the energy patterns. Was the consequence his death?

Using fifteen tall kitchen bags, I either threw out junk or saved clothes for charities.

Nothing has helped.

I’m angry. Yes, I know it’s one of the five stages of recovery after death, but I really don’t care. Finding the reason for the anger is an exercise in futility.

The crying jags come from nowhere, and often I end up on the floor, wailing and rocking. It happens because for a time my dad’s death lurks only in my subconscious. And then I remember.

Dad was my male “figurehead.” The one constant in my universe. He wasn’t cuddly or kind, more stoic and brisk. In our formative years, he rarely spoke.

When I broke my foot and hip in 2012, I heard for the very first time, a compliment. Something never before expressed.

"You're a good girl." I told everyone I could live on those comforting words the rest of my life. So, here it is. The rest of my life.

Mom has always been a strange and unbalanced woman, and now her personality is honed, edgy. She speaks in unsheathed dagger-like words. It’s best to stay silent. No matter what I say, it’s wrong.

What’s the point in life continuing? 

Dad’s gone, Mom’s more vicious, and I'm more defenseless. Wond