The New Normal

Chasm.  Lost.  Unbalanced.  Upside down.  Inside out.  Incoherent.  Broken.  Shredded.  Numb.     


Some or all of these describe my state of mind or state of being since Dad's passing.  Is it true?  Really?  It can't be.


Yet it is.  Painfully so.   


Even though I had seven years to prepare for this, I found that you are never really prepared.  In as many times as I visualized it, this was not how it seemed.  Then again, how can something unknown really seem?  


Not like this.


Not when your mind keeps playing the images of the last days and weeks of your father, when he alternated between this universe and the next one.  


When the fear in his eyes told you that he knew his days were numbered.


When he gasped at the reading of my blog post, honouring him during Father's Day.  The look in his eyes, when we made eye contact spoke volumes.  


Volumes of the past, the present.  


The end.  


The end that came on July 8th.  The end that did not go peacefully, at least as peacefully as it could have.  The end that came too late for him, yet too soon for us.  The end that keeps replaying in my mind's eye.  The end.


I keep reminding myself, it is so.  It is final.  It is.


This is the new normal, if normal is what today appears to be. 


What will tomorrow bring?  Less numbness?  Less broken?  


or just less.  We'll see.  


But I will always remember.  Always.  Dad.