6/17

Because my plane is 90 minutes delayed and I didn’t think to check it before I left, I unfortunately have time to think. 

And so as I sit with ample time to contemplate going home, it occurs to me that I’ve been gone for exactly a month. It’s crazy to think that I boarded a plane at 6:30 am on May 17^th, and turned airplane mode on because even though we can text on planes, I was terrified that I would get a text from someone random who had heard my dad died before we landed. I played The Office on the little seat TV and tuned out, staring straight ahead thinking “oh my god what if he dies.”

What if he dies. What then.

And now here I sit, exactly a month later, on the other side of What Then. 

And the reality is, I still don’t really know. What is next? 

As everyone told me, grief comes in waves. I’ll be totally fine all day, then something small will trigger every emotion I have all at once. I walked out of a baseball game with my brother and sobbed, it finally sinking in that I would never go to a ballgame with my dad ever again. And then my brother hugged me and teared up with me, and we walked and joked all the way back to the car we parked in the “secret spot” (right by the VA – they never used to check parking there) and I was filled with joy and sadness and frustration and anger and longing. Maybe that’s what grief will be. It’s not one emotion, but a myriad of emotions all at once, coming and going as they please and without warning.

I sit here in the airport, anxious just like I was at the hospital. When I’d walk out the door into the sunshine I’d take a deep breath, almost involuntarily, as if I hadn’t actually taken a real breath inside. I feel like once I get off the plane at home I’ll be able to breathe for the first time in a month. But I also don’t want to leave. Like at the hospital, I would take a few deep breaths, walk around a bit, and then something would pull me back in. As if everything in my body was saying “if you go too far away the worst will happen.” But now, the worst has already happened, so what am I afraid of? 

Will Mom be okay? Will my brother stop worrying about dying at 72? Will I have the same genetic issue he did? Will things ever feel normal again? Am I really even worried about any of those things? I honestly don’t know. 

I keep telling people “yeah, we’re holding up okay. Just holding on to how lucky we were to have him.” What I want to say is “Yeah, we’re holding up, for now, but we’ll see how tomorrow is.” 

I guess a new What Then will come every day. I’ll wake up every day for a while with “hopefully today is a good day” and if it’s not, it’s not. Today, it’s not.