20 weeks

Today I realized that this Saturday will be 20 weeks – 5 months – since my mom passed away.  It doesn’t feel like 20 weeks; 20 is such a big number and we’re getting closer to the 6 month mark which is also very strange.  My boss’s father passed away on Friday; unfortunately it happened before she was able to get there.  When she gets back, if she wants to talk, I’ll be honest with her. This journey sucks and there will be days when you want to scream, there will be days when you want to cry, there will be days when you want to be alone because you can barely stand yourself.  But she should, hopefully at some point, be happy that she didn’t sit by his bedside and watch him deteriorate like I had to with my mom. She didn’t have to help make the decision to pull the plug, as it were.  He died without her and her siblings, which I can only imagine will haunt each of them in a special way for the rest of their days, but at some point I hope they find solace in the fact that their mother was there and that he went peacefully even if it wasn’t with them present.  

It’s never easy to lose someone that you love – be it a partner, a parent, a child or a friend – they leave a hole in your life that will never be full again.  But in time, that hole doesn’t seem as dark or as bottom-less.  There are days when you’d like to toss yourself into that hole, or whoever is around you that’s annoying you/speaking to you/breathing in your vicinity; those are the hard days.  But they do become fewer as time passes, which is good.  Or at least that’s what I’ve heard.