M

I feel like I am supposed to have this big scarlet letter M on my chest, because I am in mourning. People talk to me in these hushed tones and get this funny crinkle between their eyes when they ask me how I am. It's no longer a generic question -- they actually want to know an answer now. How ARE you? No, I mean, really.

Really, I'm fine. I feel kind of bad that I'm fine. It doesn't mean that I don't miss my Dad and that I don't think that it totally and completely sucks that he is gone from my life. Particularly at Christmas time, let's be honest. Which also makes me feel bad, because what? It would have been better in March when there's no holidays going on?

Well, yeah. Who wants to associate the holidays with losing their parent? And now, my poor Mom has lost both her husband and her mother around the holidays. Yet still manages to put together a tree that would make Martha Stewart pee her pants in jealousy.

Where was I? Ah, yes -- fine. I'm fine. I feel like this is some sort of character flaw on my part. I try to explain it away to people. Give them reasons that I am fine. But let's face it -- I am the daughter of the "you've got to play when you're hurt" man. Would I even be allowed to be anything BUT fine?? It's not even that I'm forcing it. Mostly, I'm fine. I wish that things were the way they were before. I wish my Dad was going to be there on Christmas morning, pretending to like all the presents we gave him and complaining about how all we do is talk about when we're going to eat again. It's just all those dumb little things that you miss that you don't realize you're going to. But, it doesn't make me want to cry all the time and I don't feel sick anymore. I just feel sad that he's not here, but I AM glad that he won't have to deal with all the repercussions of all the cancer he had. He wouldn't have liked having to be that weak in front of us, that wasn't his style.

And I feel like because I'm not supposed to be "fine" that most people don't know how to talk to me, don't know how to approach me anymore. I was out shopping today and people treated me like a normal, regular, last-minute harried shopper. It was a relief. I wanted to ask them why they couldn't see this big scarlet M on me, but I knew it was because they didn't have the information. I wish more people didn't have the information. I wish more people didn't have to know about this change in me. I wish I didn't feel like I needed to tell them. I don't even really want to talk about It, but I feel like other people think I do so they ask. They check in. They take my emotional temperature.

My dad died. It's really fucking sad, but it turns out it's not the end of the world. Life does, in fact, go on. And everything seems even more ridiculous than it did before.

Next episode: how I'm trying not to be militant about not smoking.