**Every writer and reader I know is cringing about now. Sometimes, this is how I write. Word vomit, spilling out on the page in a rush of emotion and heartache. Confusion and uncertainty swirl in my head as I type words I don’t recognize. I’m sorry if this hurts to read this, for any reason, grief or editing. 

The date is February 26, 2018.  Tomorrow is my birthday. After tomorrow, I have officially done all the “firsts”, except the big one. This will be my first year without my dad. No funny card, no big hug and no “I love you Sis.”  My birthday marks 26 hours from the “year mark” when he was whisked off to Heaven. 

I can remember last years like it was yesterday. It feels as if it were, yet it doesn’t.  Last year I forgot. I was reminded mid-afternoon by my sweet momma, who was hugging me so tight she was afraid to let go. We were at the foot of my sweet daddy’s hospital bed, set up in the living room of their brick farmhouse. The sun was trying to peek in the window. People were in and out all day. The hospice nurse sat at the dining room table. My life turned into a slow-motion marathon that day. 

This was the day I realized what forever meant.

It was a cruel trick being played on all of us. We watched him suffer and recover, suffer and recover. In the end, I am convinced the treatment made him sicker than the cancer. My experience has been, there’s just no recovering from that, no matter who you are. Chemotherapy and radiation are no joke. They are serious treatments whose terms are flung around casually, like salt and pepper at the dinner table. I am left with more questions than answers, more sorrow and heartache than joy. It makes me positively sick.

I have a lot of thoughts swirling around inside my head. I cannot gather them enough to tell you this story adequately, but I can share these few random ones.

Grief is nothing to mess around with. As a person who is grieving and a person who has witnessed others grieving, I can tell you it takes a ton of energy, a lot of time and an overwhelming amount of patience. I mostly don’t have any of these things, but I do thankfully have Jesus. He alone carries me through this mess most days. It is a mess and a rather large one. I feel so angry, confused and just plain abandoned. I have spent plenty of days and nights begging him for a reprieve.

I admit I don’t always have helpful things to say to others when they ask me questions or try to comfort me.  I have no words for people when they say “How is your mom?” I cannot fathom having a sane answer to this question. At the very least, I have no answer which is kind, helpful or needed. I then spend copious amounts of time beating myself up for being so out of sorts.

I sleep at night without resting, I wake up in the morning and the fog returns. I sometimes think I will call my dad and tell him something funny. I have tried to dial his number a couple of times since mom disconnected it. The annoying sound of a disconnected line mocks me before I can hang up.

I have a stack of his coloring books. I sometimes flip through them, finding his pictures. I get angry because these were the very last things he did before he was gone. My dad doesn’t color!

He builds cool things. He solves problems. He hunts and fishes and spends time with his family.  He teaches. I can’t get my head wrapped around his absence. I don’t know when I feel so overwhelmed what to do. I want another conversation, another joke, another meal- I want something more I can’t have.

I want to be strong enough to have called off work more. I want to be smart enough to spend the night more. I want to be alert enough to understand when everything changed and keeping his dying secret wasn’t as important as spending his last days with him. 

His secret was well kept. He was dying. I worked every day with people who loved and cherished him. They had no idea how things were the last six months of his life. I knew every day. I kept my identity from them for the most part. It was too hard, keeping this from them. But it is what he wanted, so I honored him by keeping quiet about his suffering.

Now, I feel like a freak of nature, always wondering what he would tell me to do or how he would expect me to handle myself. I miss him so much it physically hurts. Even when I am doing something simple or silly, I get that tweak which turns very quickly into a stab. I see him in all of my children, and I grieve the loss of him for my grandchildren. I have tried for a solid year to recover to some extent. I have tried to hide my feelings of loss and anguish. I thought I was doing a good job. I was wrong. I am not even a good faker for the most part. It’s exhausting anyway, so who even cares anymore? Because I don’t

Tomorrow is February 27, 2018, my birthday. It will be spent like all the other days. I will be working down the hall from his former classroom, trying to hold on to his memory. I will sit and wonder why he stayed at his job so long. It is such a hard job, and only a special breed of person could spend their entire career there. I will walk down the hall and hope to catch a glimpse of something which reminds me of him. I will smile when I enter the cafeteria and see the flag dedicated to his memory. I will cringe when I see someone else teaching in “his room”. I think I only work there because if I don’t I lose yet another part of him. I am tired of losing parts of my dad.

I am tired of this grief. I am tired of this life without him. His absence is felt so largely. I am tired of explaining to myself this is how it is now. I am tired of being so emotionally drained. I am tired of questioning my own sanity. I am tired of the cycle of grief. I am tired of pretending.  I am tired of explaining myself. I am tired of answering questions. I am tired of seeing my mom so lonely and suffering. I am just plain tired.