New Year

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post.  I really appreciated everything everyone said.  In fact, I am generally just appreciating how many people who are out there in the world and concerned about me, and are caring about me.  It's a weird thing because no matter what your religious beliefs are, I think once someone dies, you realize that person isn't here any more and that changes your life.  I don't really have religious beliefs, so I'm not an expert by any means, but my brother and I both looked at each other at some point last week and said something like, he's gone.

There's a lot of stuff I just can't talk about right now.  Things that I wouldn't put into writing, and things about how the situation is complicated, and for the first few days this was all going on, I wasn't even sure who I was talking to and what I was saying.  I finally got home last night (which was five days later than I had intended to get home), and was finally able to sleep deeply and I feel like I'm going to need at least a few more days like that to start feeling more like myself.

One thing that has come out of all of this is more communication with my family.  My mom flew out, and while this was all going on, I had a lot of conversations with her.  And I just talked to my brother for an hour or two on the phone.  And I talked to my uncles more than I had in the ten years (though I'm still wisely avoiding talking to my grandmother, and that's okay).  I don't know of some of this is a level of me thinking that I'll just never be able to talk to my dad again.  He wasn't always a great listener, but I have often found that talking to people isn't always about their listening, but more about how I'm saying what I'm saying.  I still remember how my dad's voice sounds, and I wonder how long I'm going to remember that.  I just keep reminding myself that all of this is a process.