No one’s ever really prepared for death. Or the death of someone you love.

It hits
you with all the weight in the world and makes you fall flat on your back. It surprises you
like an unwanted hug or the loud pop of a balloon. It sneaks up on you like a snake in the
grass or an ex-boyfriend you just can’t shake. It leaves you completely confused and
dumbfounded. You can say over and over again that you prepared for it, but you didn’t.
You might have prepared to cry and to be sad. But you never prepare for the knot that
forms in your stomach that never really untangles. Grief takes a tight grip on your neck
like a violent husband or an extra tight turtleneck. There’s always a spectrum.
I knew that I needed to prepare for it because I expected it to end that way. Maybe
that sounds bad, but I never liked to sugar coat things for myself. Especially when the
outcome was clear.
It felt weird when it was really over. It was almost like everything went still.
Completely and painfully still. No one really knew what to say or how to act. Everyone
offered to help but we didn’t know how to accept it. It was an endless cycle of suffering
and helplessness. I felt so useless and so vulnerable and having so many pairs of eyes on
me only made things way worse. People love to watch and they love to talk-especially
when something dramatic or tragic happens. It makes people feel seen-important, almost.
It’s frustrating, but
The weird thing about when someone dies, is it’s an opportunity to see how the
living really felt about that person and you see how they respond to grief. It’s quite the
sight.
Some people are genuinely grieving, when others make it a competition-for a lot of
weird reasons. Territory and jealousy have a lot to do with it and there’s a lack of closure
surrounding this particular loss. Many people felt that they had unfinished business and
the loss of a loved one can blind someone from what they should and shouldn’t say. You
really see people’s true colors.
Being in a vulnerable place can bring out a lot of emotions and it’s easy to kind of stray
away from “normal programming”. The stress causes you to seek out vices-old and new.
For me, it gave me more of a “I dont’t give a fuck” kind of attitude-I already had one-but
it was justt ampliphied by the constant irriation and stress I felt. It was hard to cry
because at times, sadness wasn’t there. I could feel it on my back but not in my heart. For
a while, I just felt so angry. So angry that my mother was dealing with all of this. My
kind and generous mother was a widow now because for some fucking reason, he
decided o go right then and there. She was almost a divorcee. But no. Widow was just the
icing on top of their dramatic and expired cake.
 As for me, if I had to hear one more person tell me how proud my father was of me,
there were gonna be a couple more funerals that needed to be planned.
It infuriated me because I didn’t know these people. They were strangers.
Strangers that didn't know me and knew a version of my father that I didn’t-it made me
angry. That version of him also didn’t really exist anymore. They knew John. Not my
father. They didn’t know what it was like to have him as an authority in the future. To
rely on him for financial and emotional stability. It was a whole other ball game to play
baseball with someone and to be raised by them.
I did my job. I dressed up, I said thank you, I shed a tear, I made a playlist, and now
two weeks later, it’s obvious who actually loved my dad and just wanted a little high
school reunion. The latter was unsurprisingly a bigger percentage. Like he used to tell
me, “Never stop looking out for yourself.”
You can’t expect people to stick around when you don't accept the branch. By now the
olives have fallen off and the bark is rotting.