Waking up this morning was a check in reality. Today is the day I leave for my Dad’s memorial service. All of the planning is real now. The fact that he is not here is real now, as I prepare to say goodbye with all of our family and friends.
If you are objective, a service is really for the people who are left, not for the person who is gone. The person is gone, but the service helps us say goodbye, to honor that person one final time, in the best way we know how. We gather, we pray, we tell stories, laugh a little, cry a little…
That is the end. Except it’s not really. There is still grief to be dealt with, going through things, deciding what to keep and what to donate. There is a big lonely house. There is figuring out the new normal in my life, without my parents and without the man I thought I would be with. What does that life look like? I don’t know yet.
What I do know is that this morning, things got really…real. This is really it, we are really saying goodbye. He really isn’t coming back.
And I wonder what next Christmas will be like? I wonder what the rest of the year will hold?
And that is the thing about life; love and loss don’t actually kill you. And sometimes all you can do in bow your head, pray, have faith and just hold on.
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