A year

365 days - sounds so long. And can go so fast.

On October 23rd last year I saw my father for the last time. 365 days ago - it seems so long ago, and yet it feels like yesterday.

It was a shock to see him - I knew that his lifestyle would evenutally bring him down. I knew he had been in the hospital with heart problems. I knew, and yet I was not prepared for the man himself.

It had been close to 2 years since I had seen him. We hadn't been home in that long, and I was home alone - a last minute trip.

He was worse than I expected - he looked so old and frail. I saw him at my grandmother's house - he was staying there. They looked more like an old husband and wife than a mother and son.

I have not been comfortable with my father's health in years. Nor with my father.

I remember him hobbling out to the porch of my grandmother's duplex. Determined to see me leave. It was at rush hour, my grandmother was disoriented, trying to get her in the car was difficult... she was focused on putting her recycling boxes off the curb, my mother was concerned about being rear-ended - need I say more? I was a little distracted. And disturbed.

I got in the car, waved a cheerful goodbye and left. When i spoke to Marc the next day I told him I couldn't think about it yet, I would when I got back to Luxembourg - he was so diminished, this man who had such a difficult place in my life.

4 days later he was dead. And the time on the plane home, the time I was planning to be alone and think - well the flight got cancelled. New flights booked. Funeral arrangements made. Urn to choose. I left the funeral to head right to the airport to catch a flight (not as callous as it sounds, the funeral got delayed by a day after I had booked my flight). The whole thing is a blur - I was on autopilot, trying to get through.

And here we are a year later - no further along in a lot of ways. Estate not settled. My feelings obviously not settled.