pillar of truth

https://open.spotify.com/track/2Ejb82CnEY9OCuae9hcC9L

i got the call this morning. or in fact, i made the call this morning. my parents texted me early in the morning that i should give them a call.

i could already tell the vibe of the call by the time I clicked on my mother’s contact. my hands shook a little bit, but i knew i had to do it. i could already feel the news down my spine. my parents flew back from their international trip. at first it was a cousin who killed himself last night, but i already knew that. but they wanted to call again.

apparently she stopped eating a few days ago. my other aunt got a hotel near the assisted living to be near her as much as she could. the nurse found her unresponsive at 3AM. doctor pronounced her dead within the hour. my parents, 33,000 feet in the air, getting the call over shitty airplane wifi. i can picture it vividly. my mother crying hysterically on the flight, pacing back and forth, and dropping her iphone. my dad trying to calm her down and the passengers staring, not knowing how to respond.

i took today day off, sort of. it feels weird to get all the teams messages from coworkers telling me they’re sorry for my loss, an email from my boss telling me that i found the best care for her that i could in the end, and my mother telling me that she’s with my grandmother now.

i slept the whole day, unable to process everything. i get glimpses of realization and then just stop afterwards.

one second, i’m crying on the floor of my apartment with a $2 sundae from mcdonalds, the other i’m responding to a comment on an excel spreadsheet. i’m reviewing a contract for an IT consulting project while my hands are shaking wiping the tears rolling down my cheek. i turn off my camera and say my day is going well on every teams call.

it hits in waves.

i still have this strange thought of having to somehow still take care of her. it’s almost as if i have to make sure she gets the best seat in heaven or try and find out if tempur-pedic offers overnight shipping into the unknown. i wonder if she needs to get her medication refilled, even though i know she doesn’t need it. the idea of getting her hospice updated and all her care coordinated still runs through my mind. even after her death i still ask myself, “Do I need to tell her PCP about this? Does United Healthcare need to get involved? Do I speak with Caremark about not refilling her medication?”

i’m going to work tomorrow maybe for a big meeting that was scheduled and i worry about how it’s going to go. it was a stressful meeting in the first place (i’m basically telling them to hurry the fuck up on projects), but now I wonder if they already know the news or i have to break it to them.

update: they knew the news. my boss told everyone. i feel as if im obligated to cry in front of all of the whole team just to prove that this is real.

i feel like that’s one thing many people don’t talk about when dealing with grief is that it’s just as painful to hear the news as it is to spread it. now my coworkers know. the subcontracting company. my actual company. and almost everyone is going to hear it down the path until it becomes surround sound and wrapped around me, completely suffocating.

it’s not that i want to brush off the thought of it, but rather there’s no place unchecked where there isn’t my grief just lying there for someone to casually bring up again. i hate the idea of explaining the stories and reliving the call over and over. the explaining of her crazy journey through cancer and the end.

i’ve been having flashing thoughts of what her assisted living room will look like now. room 1 is now empty with a chalkboard of her name erased. we’ll have to get a hammer to remove the nails that hung a polaroid wall. there’s a photo of me holding my dog with the name she always mispronounced. there’s photos of us and photos of her best friends from her education days. there’s maybe like 20 photos, all going to be stored somewhere. i don’t know where. maybe in her garage?

there’s a giant M&M jar that we got her from Sam’s Club. i know it was like a quarter down from the last time i saw her. originally we used to buy them in packets. but then her dexterity got so bad to the point she would be unable to open them or she opened them so much that it would fill the floor in a rainbow road style that only a nintendo developer could dream of. the packets were switched to the jar so we could give her M&Ms in medicine cups. and then it stopped. i don’t know what we’re going to do with the jar. maybe donate it to the assisted living or throw it in the little small gray bin outside her room’s bathroom.

i bought her an Alexa. i hate alexa and amazon, but it was the only device that was reliable and stable. she used to ask the nurses to call us and she always did. it was a good way to check up on her remotely on the days we couldn’t go (which we routinely went everyday). i programmed it to have photos of her friends on it, since i would help her call them on it. they all had Alexas too, so it was easy to reach them. i don’t know what to do with that one either. do i wipe it? put it on facebook marketplace? does that go into the garage too?

what do we do with the crosses? i would say we put it back on the wall of her empty guest room, but i guess there’s two of those now.

all of the rest of the stuff is probably going straight to her garage or thrown away. do we throw away her boxes of medical records? what do we do with those? legally everything is my mother’s. i know she doesn’t know what to do with them.

i go back home next week and i don’t know what my head is supposed to be doing. originally, i was only going for my dad’s birthday for a few days, but that’s not the main reason anymore. i’m staying longer after that, since her funeral is the week after it. i’m not sure how work is going to work (not a pun) but that’s going to be factored in somehow.

i’ve been sobbing all day at the thought of her best friend calling twice last week. i forwarded it again to my mother’s email with “Putting this at the top of your inbox” and assumed she would follow up with her. all i could see from my end is her best friend leaving a voicemail with “Hey, just checking in! Give me a call when you get this. Hope to hear from you soon! :)”. this was the same best friend that would coordinate all of her other friends to send her gifts in the mail. they did their best to check in with her.

i’m assuming breaking the news to her would be the same as last time my family broke news to her, but quite a bit different than telling her about all the stuff that went down at the hospital. the quiver in her voice when she said “stroke?” and myself responding with “but she’s in a coma as well to recover from it!”.

i don’t know how funeral invites are sent around, but i guess the obituary does it.

i know you can say that’s what a hospice and funeral home is for, and you’re right. but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t hard. none of this is easy in any way shape or form.

while writing this, i had the thought how strange its going to be changing verb tenses. i won’t be able to say “is” or “has” anymore, which is going to be hard at work. no longer can i say:

“My aunt has Medicare Advantage and had one of those UnitedHealthcare House Calls this year”, which is a real sentence I said yesterday. now i have to say things like

“When my aunt had Medicare Advantage…” or “When my aunt had lung and brain cancer...”

it’s going to take a lot of mental power to rewire the way i speak about my aunt. i talk about her all the time at work because speaking about medicare/medicare disadvantage is something we always have to talk about. she faced a lot of fraud, so it’s not uncommon to somehow bring her into the conversation.

i always did my best to give her the best care i could. i just hope i gave her the best ending she ever could have.

it's been a few days with the news. i still don't understand how im supposed to respond to “sorry for your loss. if you need anything, just let me know” everyone has told me that sentence. my coworkers, subcontracting company, my boss, even people over twitch and i’m supposed to understand what that means?

i doubt my coworker is going to actually let me vent to him, cry on his shoulder, and go get wasted at an applebee’s and call it a night. i barely even know his last name.

i haven’t even told any friends if i’m being honest. it feels weird to maybe inconvenience them for even a second. do i call them? they’re busy. i know they’re busy. they’re busy with work or their personal lives. i know they get off of work at 6, so, i know they’re already tired or they could be completely free. if they won’t text me back when they’re not busy, what makes me think they’ll want to do something when i’m having a crisis?

it feels like i’m supposed to handle this on my own, like this is the adult-version of what to do. i can’t hug my mother from a million miles away or as she said over the phone “i’m giving you a virtual hug because that’s all i can do”. this isn’t coping like i’m used to, where i was surrounded by people who i love and they love me back. i’m writing this on 1MG klonopin on the floor of my apartment, half drunken sweet tea, 10pcs chicken nuggets finished, and a taylor swift song blasting out of my macbook.

this is what i have here. this is what i have to do to cope. this feels like im doing the right thing, maybe the only thing.

this is another weird factor of grieving. i don’t know how to handle it socially. it’s a large part because it’s the real part of grieving. the idea of talking to someone about this, but is this truly the “just let me know if you need anything” part that i’m missing? i know they don’t really mean it, but i like to think just for a second they actually do.

it's a strange process of not knowing what to do next. i’m not a fan of this. it’s confusing and strange. i have this feeling like i’m not grieving right. like i’m supposed to be finding a Udemy course on this for someone to give me a timeline. like i need to cry at 10AM and then get an oreo milkshake at Baskin Robin’s down the street within 30 minutes or side effects get worse. i need a doctor’s plan, but i’m not calling my therapist on this one. can’t afford therapy at the moment, i was too greedy getting it a few weeks ago.

i actually visited my parents a few weeks ago when i went back for my cousin’s death. that was unexpected, but i was also quite relived when i found out it wasn’t a suicide. that was my immediate thought by the way, since he’s the only representation i’ve got in the family and he never accepted his sexuality. i could go more in depth about this cousin, but it’s kinda like grieving² in a way. i haven’t really grieved that much on him yet, but also another cousin died on the same day as my aunt.

so, it’s like. 3 deaths in the span of what? a month? i had the idea of a joke where i said that i’m glad i don’t have to buy more funeral clothes, because it’s been so recent.

i know going back to texas is going to be just as hard as it was last time. it was a strange time. it was my sister’s birthday, but i was also told i was going to be an uncle. so that was a thing.

i of course saw my aunt while i was there. my mother has been telling me about this “hospice from hell”, hellspice if you will, that she signed my aunt up for.

my aunt was their 3rd patient that the hospice had, since they were unaccredited which was a whole another thing. my mother then told me about the demon doctor that ran it and how she would be rude and scare her.

when i visited my aunt, i could see my mother was holding onto the thought of anything getting better. my aunt was obviously dying in front of both of us, but my mother considered it a good day. my aunt looked around the room, but couldn’t speak a word. she was too weak to move any of her body except her head and her eyelids. she stared at me mostly and my mother was telling how good of a day my aunt was having at that moment. i could tell my mother was lying to herself or was truly delusional as i could clearly see my aunt was going to pass within the next few months. she was withering away.

about a year ago, i got the news the cancer had spread to her bones. it was something that was quickly dismissed by her PCP and her oncologist.

we got the MRI that showed the cancer was growing aggressively. i remember sliding down my wall when her nurse practitioner called. she asked to stay on the phone with me to make sure i was okay. i obviously was not because, while this was the news i expected to hear, this wasn’t the time i thought it would be. i thought to myself that i failed my aunt, as a few months prior, everyone took her off of her chemo. they said that it was making her feel worse than it actually treated her. i always disagreed, since she’s been used to the side-effects for over 8 years, but i’m not a doctor, i was just a 23 year old.

i still feel that i didn’t do enough for her. that i should have caught her signs earlier. i remember having to talk to my parents about how she should have her keys taken away, but i didn’t know that was a sign of dementia. in fact, her oncologist knew she had dementia, but didn’t tell anyone but her medical record. we just kept hoping she would get better. my parents thought it was a side effect of her “football chemo” which is whole brain radiation. usually people don’t last a few months after getting it, but she lasted a few years.

it never really occurred to me that my aunt could die. she’s my aunt. i’ve known her for 24 years at this point. i have so many memories with her. i never really thought she wouldn’t be at the thanksgiving i’d bring a boyfriend home or more christmases. i just…i don’t know. you don’t really process cancer until it truly hits, ya know? it feels like more of a personality trait, rather than an actual disease at some point. sounds rude, but i mean it’s like saying “yeah, i like pizza, i have cancer, and occasionally, i’ll drink red wine”. it’s like that, where after a while the idea of it just fades into the background until it gets worse.

i’ve always known her. i would stay with her after school helping her with her classroom. she would put her CDs (yes, CDs) on and i’d be placing stickers on her students desks. she always made sure they had all their school supplies. she would buy it for them just to make sure they were ready. books organized alphabetically on the shelves. the endless supply of diet coke in the teachers lounge. oh, and somehow there was always chocolate cake. somehow. i didn't understand that part. oh and the lamination machine that i thought was the coolest.

i spent a majority of my childhood with her. every summer it was me playing on her computer with games and then trying to explain it to her. new restaurants to try every friday was our thing. movies on the weekend with shared popcorn. little vacations to go see extended families. pictures of me as a kid with me holding onto her at disneyland.

this is the same person i would see in front of me, with a losing battle to a few ounces of tumor in her lungs and brain, unable to speak, but only stare. she could only look around the last time i saw her. just staring. me telling her that i started school and i knew she would love to hear that. we told her that my sister was expecting. she didn't respond of course, but just stared. according to the Chaplin, she was able to understand by blinking and closing her eyes and bowing her head to pray.

it's a scary and sad thought of my aunt hearing all this news around her unable to speak. she was unable to move her hands and could only move her head. i could see her try. but she couldn't.

the person who i knew for years, the teacher i always looked up to, the aunt i spent my summers with, the person i internally referred to as my grandmother, withering away in front of me. and there wasn't anything i could do but the same as she could. stare.

her funeral is sometime next week but i don't really know. no one knows because “death always has funny timing” as everyone always says for some stupid reason.

a part of me feels like i caused her death in a weird way. i remember seeing her last, where my mother was extremely happy seeing that my aunt was having a good day. and by good day, she meant by moving her head and looking around.

i could tell what was happening, but everyone was at the point of delusion of how the situation actually was. my aunt was dying in front of them. in front of me. i could see that. but they couldn't.

they worried about getting her chocolate protein shakes, the doctor worried if this was going to “feed her or feed the cancer”.

my mother worried about her bed, her everything. i saw my aunt dying.

i should have held her hand when i saw her last. i didn't. on purpose. i told myself if i held her hand, this means it would be the last time i’d see her. this means that she's truly dying.

i couldn't do it. i was going to see her in like what, two weeks later? for my dad’s birthday. (he's got 7 more before his expected death - another fun thing on my mind). i knew we were going to celebrate his birthday with her. bring her some cake maybe. some balloons for her to understand what was happening. my sister to show her baby bump and maybe a sonogram of the little alien in her stomach. i could picture all of us surrounding her bed, hoping she'd understand anything we'd tell her.

all of us hoping and reaching for anything to connect with her again. last year, i got her an Alexa and we would video chat with my parents. telling her about new jersey and she would say “New Jersey!!! I'm so proud of you! I love you!” and she always had it in her head I worked for united healthcare.

i left her at the same time she got discharged from that insane SNF/rehab and that same week apply for a job and do an interview. and leave.

i left her as soon as she seemed to get better, but we'd facetime at least. slowly i could see the progress over a shitty 5MBPs Comcast connection on my end. first it was my aunt unable to stay on topic. then not looking at the screen. to her saying random things. to my mother just taking over the calls. her nurse practitioner in the background of the call. the assisted living staff giving her even more medicine. my aunt more quiet than usual.

even on her birthday she couldn't speak, other than saying “Love you” before i left. i remember my mom crying and praising her, because that's all she said that day. she said i love you to me. and she used all her strength to do it.

i don't think i have much strength to go back home. i leave tomorrow and already im stressing and crying. i got stares on the ride back home on the train because of how much i tried to muffle my crying.

i don't know how work is going to be tomorrow. my boss is going to ask about leaving tomorrow, we'll talk about the subcontractor, we'll talk about the security review i’m being contracted for, and maybe we’ll gossip about the other company we're partnering with.

but in the back of my mind i think about the flight back home. the spirit flight. the check-in. the ride there on the most cramped seat. unable to know what to do. taking klonopins on takeoff out of fear what seeing people post-news would feel like.

the flight got moved to next week. i got a wall of text from my dad explaining that we're hoping for a funeral on the 15th and maybe we'll get it, god willing (quite literally since it's depending on the church).

it's just been weird. i thought about what it would be like if i talked about it with a friend. maybe a quick text. maybe asking to grab dinner or something. but i don't really know how to get my mind off of this actually. everyone gives conflicting advice.

how do i experience grief? am i doing it right? am i supposed to be crying in the teams meeting? why am i getting looks for replying with “doing well!” when someone asks me about my day.

i emailed my boss about the funeral date. she emailed me “Welcome Back”, as if i ever actually left work (i took one day off, the day i heard the news). it's been hard.

i can't stop thinking about the past year or so, and whether or not to text the people who've helped her thanks for everything they've done. it hurts to break the news to people and i don't want to put that sadness or burden on them. maybe they'll hear it from someone (my aunt somehow knew everyone), maybe they won't.

i went home today and saw her folder. i recognize this folder actually. back when she had her millions of documents in her room, she had this folder. a dark green folder sitting on the desk in front of me with a sticky note on it from my mother trying to figure out her arrangements. hotmail email addresses and scratched out words that i’ll never know what they meant. of course, i opened the folder.

at first, i wasn’t sure of what i was looking at. lots of numbers, mostly in the $2k range. there was a lot of writing and checkboxes, but i felt that i knew the handwriting. i kept flipping the pages over and over, reading line by line to see a perfectly laid out plan of what was going to happen to my aunt once she died. refrigeration. cremation. flowers. burial.

all within one piece of paper sitting in front of me. i flipped more and more to see all of the detailed instructions until i came upon the last few pages. there were initials that i knew that weren’t my mother’s. i finally saw the signature that i knew from my aunt.

it sort of looked like the signature i knew, mostly because over the years of dementia/brain cancer, your signature starts to change. a lot of people don’t know that’s a sign for some reason, but she still had her signature H that i always remembered. according to my mother, she used to take so much pride in her penmanship and i could see it. in a document dated December 9th, 2016, she knew she was going to die.

i imagine her googling on her macbook to find a local funeral home within short distance of her house. i would assume her oncologist recommended this and knowing my aunt, she did it without telling anyone. the thought of someone knowing they were going to die within a few years, the thought of having to pre-plan this to ease the future burden of a family saddens my soul, except knowing it was my aunt makes it all the worst.

i remember her in 2016. i don’t know and maybe i’ll never know what caused her specifically on that day to walk into a funeral home and sign these papers. i don’t know what her oncologist told her during an appointment that made her think this was the end for her. that it was near. i could tell by her signature that she was of sound mind at the time. the check that she wrote that was copied, scanned, and stapled at the end had the same penmanship.

she knew exactly how this would plan out and she prepared for it. i don’t know how to process that, the idea that my aunt went through all of this alone, the thought of planning her death. she had directives, to basically kill her if it came to it. the idea of removing her pain if it got to that point, to which my mother disagreed with, until i had to reason with her of what her sister truly wanted.

the idea of cancer is just one that doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but it’s also something so common that you’d think this is something that everyone prepares for. i don’t think i ever was, or actually i know, that i wasn’t prepared for this moment. even after taking care of her everyday for 2 years, i knew she had cancer, but that wasn’t the only problem. she forgot things often. she didn’t take her medication. she had a million doctors that were all shitty and i had to organize all of them. she needed glasses.

all of these things ran through my mind, but the thought of her dying never did. it ran through her mind though and i can see it in front of me. a real “wet” signature of black ink signed on the date of when she knew she was going to die. no smears. no misspellings. no scratched out text. just a perfect writing of someone who knew they were going to die, sitting in front of me. the real copy. the one she held on that day in 2016, knowing full well this was the end for her.

now i have to help take this folder and make sure everything goes according to her plan. this green folder. with sticky notes. non-copied documents. and a letter at the end saying “Thank you for trusting us.” from the funeral home.

i didn’t cry at the funeral. it didn’t feel like a real funeral if I'm being totally honest. I've been to quite a lot of funerals, in fact, i got another scheduled on wednesday.

the funeral home didn't do one of those photoshopped photo of my aunt that you usually see at funerals. there weren't any cards passed around with her face on it, instead it was a picture of a random religious painting and an ad for the funeral home on the bottom.

everything had an ad in it somehow, which i thought was a bit weird. the tiny booklet that you get when walking in with all the hymns asked you to follow the printing company on facebook and twitter (or x now i guess).

there weren't a lot of people, despite my aunt knowing almost all of the town. i assumed that the school/church that was doing the funeral and where she worked for 10+ years would do something, like in a newsletter or something. none of her students came, despite her students still writing to her thanking her for her teaching to this day.

she was always remembered for her teaching, but now she was last remembered in a blue and gold urn, a photo i took to test out portrait mode on my google pixel, and flowers that didn't fit around the urn. everything felt as if it wasn't given a second thought. the funeral home didn't do anything other than burn my aunt. they were great at that apparently, but anything else my grieving and sobbing mother was told “unfortunately that's extra”. my aunt planned everything, already had the placement in a burial wall, the urn picked out, and everything. she planned everything she could for a funeral home that could care less about her.

i didn't cry for that specific reason. it didn't feel like it was something for my aunt, it felt like i was just asked to go to sunday chapel with a friend or roommate (my roommate tried many times to invite me to his).

it wasn't a special day at all, yet i dreaded it the most. my tissue pack is still unopened in my pocket, i stole a rosary, and i think about my aunt's funeral with a more negative thought than one full of more grieving release.

i told my boss that i’d be out the entire week because i felt like it would be different. my parents would be sobbing, everyone trying to pick up the pieces left by my aunt. but i think everyone felt the same as i did. small tears here and there, but it didn't feel like the real thing.

i know you can tell me that it's because i’m in the denial - that a part of me feels like my aunt is still here, lying in her deathbed in her assisted living.

maybe there is, but i know the funeral she would have wanted. it wasn't this. this felt like an insult or something that was thrown together by a chatgpt knock-off. wish . com level funeral

i felt more saddened by a cousin’s funeral than my own aunt's, who i took care of for 2 years and considered her like a grandmother.

there are collages we made for the funeral table full of photos of my family and her on family vacations and her just being herself. some of her as a kid, some as an adult. some as the aunt i always knew.

that same person in the urn was the one i forgot existed over the last few years when i helped her and saw her go through treatment and chemo. her heart and kindness always existed, but the same personality i knew no longer existed in there.

we placed her in a box on a wall, as she wanted. the box filled with her and a little Lincoln Continental toy car. she always dreamt of getting one and that was the thing that she related to my dad with.

she never got to get a lincoln continental and she lost the battle to the one thing everyone is afraid of.

it feels weird post-funeral. like, this is it. this chapter has closed and i can't write any more pages. she is gone. the memories are still here for as long as i can remember. but she's gone. ashes burnt in a metal oven and stuffed into an urn.

i feel as if i both understand and don't understand.

i feel like a child when they first hear of death. when they run around the pillars and probably be given a toy so that they stay quiet. they don't understand the concept just yet and they hug their parents legs asking when they're going to see their relative. they see this as a strange event for the relative they saw not too long ago, but all the adults in the room understand what's happening.

that's what i feel is happening to me right now. i’m nothing but a child confused and lost. my aunt is still in the assisted living. she's still lying in her bed and she wants to tell me a story. she wants to take me to the movies again and share a diet coke (even though i hate diet coke). she's asking me for help on her computer or that she doesn't understand how to send a merry christmas photo to her friends. she's asking me for help trying to figure out how to decorate the corkboard for her students. she's wearing her jean shirt that she got from the school, her favorite, with the school name engraved with an apple beside her own on the other side. she's asking me to play a CD for her and tell me that i need to go get a master's degree someday. she's asking me to troubleshoot her projector or hang out with the son of another teacher friend in the other classroom.

she's gone and that's such a weird thought.

i walked into her house the other day. i guess not her house anymore, but now the house of her sister. i went to look through boxes of old tech that she had, as my other aunt didn’t know what to do with it.

i haven’t visited her house in a while after she moved over to the assisted living, but now that’s no longer an option to visit. which is a shame, i genuinely liked the people there (and i still miss ms. tina. hope she’s still here with us)

it felt weird to walk into a house that i know is now emptier. the guest bedroom that i remember her old computer was in that would have a downloaded spongebob screensaver i added or the photos she had of me as a kid, now sitting on a desk soon to collect dust. bedsheets that she picked out, now sitting there. everything in the house was picked by her, even the location so she could be closer to my family and see my sister and i grow up. she never got to see us get our degrees, but at least she got to see us grow up in front of her. i don’t know if she could understand that my sister is now having a kid, a boy when we told her. but at least i take comfort of knowing she was at least here when it happened and we tried our best to explain it to her while she looked around the room too weak to say anything.

it feels empty to walk and see everything in this house. the thought of my other aunt, alone in this giant house. she spent her life as a custodian, so it’s both her professional and casual job to clean, which i can’t imagine the thought of cleaning an entire house you knew your sister used to live with together. she showed me around and told me how she’s keeping the windowsill clean. and that she’s throwing a lot of junk away.

she showed me my aunt’s room and it looked similar, but feelings wise i know it’s different. her cancer wig wasn’t on the top shelf anymore, neither was a lot of her decorations. most of everything was gone, part of the “decluttering” as she said. “does this bring me joy?” style.

“I don’t know what to do with these. donate them?” my aunt asked as she pointed to all of my aunt’s achievements.

i felt as if my aunt asked me to look for guidance on what to do, as if i had any. i don’t know what to do with this hand painted plate that her students painted for her when they found out she had cancer. or this custom engraved clock that she got. or this best teacher of the year award. i just don’t know.

it’s overwhelming and suffocating to see all of these things, things that not only capsulated her in perpetual state, but things she was so proud of. do we toss it in the landfill? donate it to goodwill? what do you do with it?

do we keep it in her room? is it there just to collect dust? what is it there for and what should we do with it?

her prized possession - a school bus book that had drawings from her students. my aunt as the bus driver surrounded by her student’s plans of their future. the students drew photos of the each other in their class on the bus seats, a bright sunny sun, and grass only a texan could be envy of.

this was the same book i showed my aunt when she was having a stroke. i didn’t know what a stroke was, so i just tried to get her to look at something that would make her happy. we had her favorite music on and i showed her this book, reading aloud the names of her students while a nurse i knew was on her way to the house. frantically flipping through the pages as if it was going to help at all. it even went to the hospital with her.

all of this. frozen in time of all of her years sitting in a house no longer occupied by her with the thought of “well, what do we do with it?”

the easiest go first. her clothes and CDs to goodwill, even some of her cassettes. books go to the library and my sister’s nursery (something my aunt always wanted to see). jewelry goes to my sister or a pawn shop i guess. medical stuff stays with my other aunt as she decides for a future without her other sister. the thought of her car scares her, as she looks at her other sister’s death and contemplated that she’d be at the age of not being able to drive soon.

all of these thoughts, feelings, and everything else just sits inside these boxes as if we’re supposed to know what to do with it.

what do we do with it?

we found pictures of my grandmother and even a watercolor painting she commissioned, but i never knew of my grandmother. she died while i was a kid, but i recognize the family photo. two now dead and two still alive.

its been a few days and i still feel like i’m not doing this right. i somehow put overtime during the week i was supposed to take off to fully grieve. maybe being overly-productive is a way to grieve?

i feel as if i need a symptom checker to see if i’m experiencing the correct side-effect.

things feel a bit emptier, so maybe it has had an effect on me. i’ll listen to lucy dacus and i feel like it’ll get me in the mood to grieve.

both the songs pillar of truth and historians get me in the mood to overly cry, mostly because pillar of truth is about her dying grandmother, the other about the idea of keeping someone’s history post-death.

it’s such a weird thought of someone living 73 years and then they’ll be no memories of her down the line. like in 50 years they’ll see a name in an ancestry website or the family tree my dad manages, not knowing anything about her.

hopefully her students remember her. i think they do. i know she had an impact on them.

but the thought of someone becoming irrelevant to an entire generation of people is just ….. strange? like i understand obviously how and why it happens. but the thought of becoming a stranger and just a name on a family tree in years to come is something i haven’t thought of before.

when looking at my family tree, i recognize names, such as my grandmother’s, but by the time i was really able to start remembering things, she already heavily declined. i remember her in a wheelchair and my dad regretting he didn’t start hospice soon enough. i didn’t know what that word truly meant until a few months ago.

it's been about a week since the funeral. i still think about the idea of a body being burned, stuffed into a case, and locked behind a box forever. it's like a weird thought to understand there's an end to things, especially people.

i feel as i don't know what to do with this information. it's been something that has been like, weirdly on my mind but it also feels stupid to do so.

if i’m thinking about someone who is dead and can't continue their own story, it feels like a waste of a thought. it's honestly why I've always hated movies.

i'm supposed to move on with my life, the chapter is closed. i don’t think i’m supposed to take it this hard. it’s not like my aunt was my sister or immediate family. “she’s just an aunt” as i would assume someone would say.

the story is over. the book is done. the movie is over, the lights are turning back on and no one is staying for the credits. the show didn’t get renewed for the next season. the artist finished her tour.

there are lots of other ways i can use to describe the finalization of something, but i feel like that’s just the way i’m supposed to think about it.

sometimes i wish i could see her. obviously i know i can’t, but i mean pre-cancer. she was a completely different person back then, someone who had it all together. by the time i started high school, i think i could have really used her advice. the cancer/dementia already began to kick in, really since her brain was microwaved twice to remove cancer.

by then, i didn’t really get to ask her for the advice i always wanted. we used to talk about everything and she would always vent about the students she had. she always wanted to help them and i always wanted the gossip.

it’s strange to really think about how my aunt was as a kid versus how i spent the last few years thinking about her.

when going through her things, i saw photos of her, like a photo of her posing next to her new car. extremely retro to the max and i absolutely loved it. (my mother didn’t but i’m not sure why). i saw her report card from college. i never took her as someone who’d fail at so many science classes and even history as a history major but all of this painted a picture of who my aunt was, not what the cancer was with a hint of my aunt in it.

this was the aunt i both forgot and remembered. i forgot about the chocolate loving aunt who drove in her crystler 300 (which we had to sell) to pick me up on the weekends to go eat breakfast. grand slam at denny’s with sausage. black coffee. 2 creams and 2 sugars.

i still think about her jean shirt embroidered with her name on it, now probably sitting in a landfill or at goodwill, where someone will be confused why someone’s name is on it, and why it’s worth $2.

there was so many complexities to my aunt’s personality that completely disappeared when she got cancer. she was flandarized into a person who liked coffee, was a school teacher, watched the history channel, and always wore wigs to hide her head. i got used to that personality to the point when i saw those photos of her while going through her things that i remembered her for who she was when i was a kid. it almost felt like looking at a different person, as if my aunt had a twin sister that i forgot or this was an melissa/avril situation.

cancer completely changed her and it’s something i never really processed until now. it’s hard to process if i’m being completely honest. i’m not sure how you’re supposed to do it. no one really gives a step by step guide of “your loved one has cancer and is dying. here’s an hourly timeline of how you’re supposed to react”.

it’s weird to have everything hitting all at once.

i see it as

• my aunt had cancer. stage III lung w/ mets to the brain cancer.
• my aunt changed completely without me noticing
• my aunt went through a lot of medical trauma
• my aunt died twice - both when she changed due to cancer to her last breath on a hospice bed.

is it weird to say i hate the burial spot she chose? i know she chose it, i know it was what she wanted, but i fucking hate it.

i don’t get to see a tombstone of her, something i could decorate with her favorite things. one of those types i get to put flowers to remember her by or add little pinwheels. idk what else people put on them, but i wish i could have decorated something for her

my dad put in a little toy of the car she always wanted to get, while i forgot to put in something like one of her apples she would get awarded or that yellow school bus book that her students made for her.

is it selfish to want a better place for her to be? to want a better way to grieve? to find another way of trying to find any sort of connection with her - even if it’s just shitty dollar tree flowers in a foam to put in a pot.

every mother’s day my mother goes and plants flowers on her mother’s tombstone as i always sit in the car watching her as my dad comforts her. it’s always a hard watch and i never know what i’m supposed to do. she grieves her every year and probably every now and then too. i wouldn’t be surprised if she had the thought that someday i’d do the same for her.

i feel like i should mourn on grandparent’s day, which i know, she’s not my grandmother, but if you were to ask 2nd grade me in a classroom full of white kids who had their grandparents in perfect health and asked about mine, i always said was my grandmother. my true grandmother declined extremely fast, full wheelchair, and lived 3 hours away. everyone else’s grandmothers flew in from their retirement homes in florida in perfect health and got to help out with the arts and crafts everyone would make together. but not me.

a teacher noticed one time that i wasn’t really focusing on my grandparent’s day tasks. i didn’t feel like painting a picture or creating a craft. i knew it was just going to go home to my parents and just awkwardly sit there. maybe we’ll take it to grandma? maybe my dad will explain it in spanish and i just nod my head and pretend i know what she’s saying. or from what i remember, maybe she’ll judge it and think i could do better.

my parents suggested that i just use my aunt as a replacement, since she was here and could go to all of the grandparents day things. she could take off a few hours of teaching down the road to see me do the giant performance we’d all do for grandparent’s day. i would talk about her on stage, but would always replace the word aunt for grandmother, or else it didn’t make sense.

that’s what it mainly consisted of, but i do remember my bible teacher laughing at me one time when she asked me to write down a phrase that my grandmother says. i wrote down “i love you more than yesterday” and she laughed and said that must mean she doesn’t really love me in the first place and that i could put that on the art piece if i really wanted to, but she didn’t really see the value in it.

i knew what the value in what she was saying, but no one in that room, who was extremely close to their grandmothers with no language barrier or health issues in sight, could understand where i was coming from when choosing my aunt instead

maybe i’ll visit her on grandmother’s day, or whenever i’m back home. i don’t know what i even do really, since she’s shoved into a box with a giant grid of other dead people. i feel as if i leave flowers, i’m literring on the concrete. there isn’t any way to honor her or remember her at the place she’s truly at right now. i don’t know how to process or deal with that.

it’s not fair that she didn’t have a real funeral. i’m still grieving in weird ways or random times but i feel like this is what i’m supposed to get over. like if someone heard me crying in my office, i feel like it’s an eyeroll and “he’s doing it again”.

i was late to work again because i don’t really feel like going. i don’t know how grieving is supposed to work, mostly because i feel like it’s taking too long. probably doesn’t help that i was in a depressive low before (and barely wanted to go to work) so now it’s even worse.

on the same day of my aunts death, my cousin committed suicide. apparently he had a rough emotional life. his entire bloodline was dead. “he grieved almost every month” and the trigger for his death was that his FMLA was up and he didn’t want the stress of the workplace any more.

hearing about his daughter screaming while driving and almost crashing, the entire family getting sleepovers with other family, and just the entire dynamic changing.

when i spoke with them, she got only 3 days off from work to grieve, her children a week off from school to grieve (they also get extensions on homework).

that to me was a weird thing and i feel weird thinking about it. in theory, according to the real world, 3 days is enough time. 1 week is enough time, yet i feel as if im still having a hard time processing it weeks later. it’s been about a month since i heard the news. maybe 2 weeks since the funeral.

everyone mourns differently and i don’t truly know how im supposed to be still. i keep invalidating myself because i feel like im doing this wrong.

i miss her. i miss talking about olive garden or laughing at the thought of her having records and CDs. something about how she doesn’t like Hulu or she’s talking about michelle obama.

it’s not fair she doesn’t get to see my nephew when that’s what one of her goals was. she has so many goals involving my sister and i. she saw my sister get married and she always talked about how happy she was that my sister found someone. i’m glad she got to see that goal. i just wish she got to see the others.

i feel like if i don’t think about my aunt, she’ll just fade into nothingness. i saw her obituary again when i was googling my name. i was applying for a new job and was curious what would come up - didn’t expect my full name to be on an obituary, but also didn’t expect to re-read all of the things i kinda pushed away from my mind for a second.

days are busy. busy busy busy. all of the time, it feel like i don’t have much time to think and maybe that is a good thing, but it also feels like i’m forgetting things. the thought occurred to me today of what if i forget the time she took me to corpus christi? or when we used to go see movies when i was a kid? or when i would stay over at her house?

what if i just … forget?

the thought of that just terrifies me. it feels like a never ending loop into darkness of the idea that a legacy ends. a person ends. their story is closed. the library is closed and the books are being thrown out.

it’s a scary feeling knowing that the thoughts of her are slipping away. i don’t ask about her anymore on family facetime calls and it’s just different, but in a way i don’t really remember.

i don’t know how to fully describe it, but i can feel my brain forgetting. it’s withering away as if it’s some muscle that isn’t going to be used in a long time. her funeral happened. that’s a fact. i know that happened.

it’s just a weird thought. in 5 years, will i remember as much as i know now? probably not. i’ll do my best too - but i’ll probably forget the time she took me to a panini place for the first time or when i got her olive garden, or when i freaked her out with uber eats. or maybe when we went to corpus christi.

i’ll probably forget all of those in a few years - as if i’m not even forgetting what i know now. i couldn’t even remember where i placed my apple watch the other day and left it in another state - do i really expect myself to remember what it was like to decorate her classroom. i’ll never forget the hard parts of course, the staying overnights at hospitals and yelling at SNF directors, but the actual core part of my aunt is something that i forgot a long time ago, and it’s going to fade even more now.

it feels like some distant memory, since it is, but even more so. i feel it. i feel my brain forgetting it. it’s like … i genuinely wish i can describe it. the only analogy i can think of is when you squeeze a go-gurt or something. like it’s just .. going away. it’s being replaced with kitchen nightmares or baulder’s gate 3 or whatever all the newest things are. removing legacy code, so to speak.

it’s getting written over and it feels as if my aunt’s death means nothing. i know it means something, it means a lot to me, but it’s just this feeling of my aunt died and that is so insignificant compared to everything else. it’s a memory now. an entire person compressed into a tiny memory in the back of my mind that i’m begging the new five nights at freddie’s movie won’t replace when i’m not looking at it. it’s like when you’re dropping off your kid at pre-k for the first time and they won’t let go of your leg. it feels like that, the idea of if i let this go, it’s gone forever. it’s never coming back. the memories will never come back.

“they’ll always live on in our memories” feels like a lot of bullshit. my brain doesn’t really have the capacity for that these days. it gets written over. again. and again. and again. i had a jolibee chicken sandwich today. and i’ll probably forget that by this time tomorrow.

it’s been two months. i didn’t realize that. two months ago i could see my aunt, although she didn’t really talk. but she was at least there. now she’s somewhere. technically, she’s ashes in an urn in a wall i don’t really know what to do with. do i grieve on a pavement? leave flowers for the maintenance guy to throw away later that night? do i need to schedule a time where someone can unlock the gate and then wait for me to be done grieving so he can lock the place up?

it feels weird to be upset that i can’t grieve properly about this. i don’t really get the closure i know i desperately need. it feels selfish. but it’s something i need to understand.

i thought about the hospital today. the feeling of the first night there with my aunt in half-coma. i remember feeling so cold, alone, and empty. my mother huddled in a corner not knowing what to do. no one knowing what to do. if you’ve ever been to a hospital at night, it’s just silent beepings down halls. lights are off. you’ll see the automatic lights turn on as a nurse walks by. the click of keys maybe - if you’re lucky.

i remember just pacing back and forth. having a shitty macbook air in one hand trying to google whatever my aunt possibly had. i remember just all of the shelves of things we brought for her in the room. we brought everything we could and it was a little room for us for 3 days (thank god it wasn’t longer there). i have been thinking about that moment.

unable to eat, eating just m&ms from a vending machine and drinking coca-cola, 3am at a pen-dropping quiet hospital. it’s a weird feeling not knowing something - especially when it’s with your own family.

sometimes i wonder what i’d tell myself if i was able to talk to myself back then. i keep thinking about all of the insane scenes over the past few days.

flashes of random memories. i have one right now of staring out of the window of the rehab. we decorated the rehab since she’s been there for a month at that point. we got little things from the dollar tree, like a fake little canvas. anything to feel more like home, i guess. it was a little painting of coffee - her favorite. large hand sanitizer. wipes. i had extra clothes there. my mother’s long HP charger so she’d be able to take meetings. my mother’s chromebook as i scrambled to find other places to take my aunt.

it feels so cold. i remember the giant route 44 dr peppers my mother used to get. i don’t truly know how to describe it - but it was this weird mode of “i’m going to work” and my mother just did what she could by getting me dr pepper and food.

somehow i became full caregiver, coordinating care, talking to doctors, and getting shit done. it’s something that i truly haven’t done before, but maybe it’s because it has to do with family.

i miss the orange chicken from the chinese restaurant down the street. it’s called King Bowl, if you ever feel like going. it feels like a grocery shopping trip with the way you get so much food. literally the size of a small child, but it was something that became a bit of a routine. my mother would drive to sonic, i’d get a RT44 Dr Pepper, we’d go to King Bowl next, and we’d go back to rehab center. N95s and all (given they had two separate floors of maybe COVID and not COVID). it was a routine

for 3 months (and even after) i had routine of being around my aunt. i mean before that, i did fully take care of her while she was declining. i was basically the in-home caregiver with my mother. i tried so hard to do everything i could - and yet i still don’t think that i could have done everything i could.

maybe if i was a bit harder on her wearing her hearing aid - maybe she wouldn’t have gotten dementia so fast.

maybe if i monitored her salt - maybe she wouldn’t have gotten a stroke.

maybe if i gotten a better fitbit - maybe she would have regained her strength.

i feel like i tried everything, but also that i failed at everything. i feel the coldness of the hospital again, both hospitals this time. the swirling voices around me in the burn unit ICU (that’s where they kept her) asking me all of these questions. dr pepper fueled brain at 3AM trying to piece together everything to hopefully make my aunt be better.

i remember just sitting there. watching her EEG monitor. just wondering what must be going on within this room. how long is my aunt going to be here? is she even here? what’s happening?

routines are weird. i thought my aunt was never going to wake up. not sure if i really ever explained it, but she was in a coma for about 2 months. we had “should we pull the plug talks” and those were hard.

doctors called my mother stupid for not doing it and thankfully we didn’t listen. or maybe we should have.

i dont really know. another thing i keep thinking of is “are you feeding her or the cancer” when the hospice director asked me when i mentioned protein shakes. she told me the idea of maybe keeping her alive is just extending her suffering - and i felt like that’s a direct result of what i’ve been doing.

my aunt said she was happy when i saw her. smile and everything. but she’s been though so much pain. i’d like to think i did my best to minimize it, but i also blame myself for letting it go on for so long. i should have intervened sooner. i should have helped minimize all the pain. none of it makes sense and i feel completely all over the place. i feel like im back at the hospital. i remember standing in the ICU of the second hospital, holding a wendys bag and shaking a dr pepper in my hand uncontrollably not knowing what was going to happen. i prepared a document to hand doctors to so i didn’t have to answer so many questions - they just had it in front of them.

what would i have told myself back then? sometimes i wonder if doing all of this actually helped her or not. today i feel the weight of “maybe i made her suffer more” and a doctor did actually tell me that once. 3rd time she went in the hospital for syncope, a doctor told me “what the fuck do you think you’re doing? do you think she wants to be here?”. tbf, he did sedate my aunt with a antipsychotic and refused to admit it even after i dug through the MAR, but maybe he was potentially onto something. a broken clock is right twice a day type beat.

did i ever really help my aunt? she had a document that told us what to do. it was my recommendation to put her on a PEG tube - but for temporary. for a month or so.

i remember the shitty NP looking at me like i was crazy - that i was violating my aunt’s wishes. to be fully honest, i still think she wanted my aunt to die - but i remember the “pull the plug” conversations between my family. you never really understand that feeling until it happens. it’s this overwhelming “do i let someone i love die even though they could come back” and even then, my aunt came back as a vegetable slowly over time. “full assist” if you want to go medical and couldn’t really keep a sentence. maybe 20% of her was left by the time we fully got her out of the hospital.

“good days” and “bad days” happened. i miss having a conversation with my aunt. i miss hearing her voice and talking about coffee.

i keep coming back to this. i feel as if i forget about this, it’ll all fade away. i couldn’t remember much of what i did today, so i’ll probably just forget all of this in a few months - maybe a year?

thought about my aunt again, mostly because of the idea i’d have to tell my therapist about everything that’s happened.

i saw a tiktok about how grief just randomly pops in your head every now and then. it’s true. i was cleaning out my fridge and was grabbing out pasta sauces that have gone bad. i immediately thought about the time you’d always used to make me spaghetti with ragu sauce that was meat flavored. and then you’d actually cook the meat with it. the pasta was always kinda hard but i never said anything. i was just happy to share a meal with my aunt. i remember the blue plastic plates you used to have before you threw them away for newer ones. they reminded me of school cafeteria plates, which is very on brand. we’d both have diet caffeine free coke, which you always loved at room temperature which i found disgusting. there was never an ice maker so i always tried to preemptively put a few in the fridge just for me.

that was kind of our routine for a bit and i always think about it every time i see a ragu bottle or im making pasta - which is quite often. it makes me miss you. i still think there’s two of you i miss - which ive mostly been missing the pre cancer you a lot. i didn’t realize how much change there was until i was older. people change, but it’s completely different when it’s a majority of your synapses. half of them gone with radiation.

i want download random fish screensavers and play yahoo games again like i used to. with the old CRT monitor in your guest bedroom. with a picture of me on the top of your desk. you were always so proud of me. i wish you were still proud of me now.

i’m home again. i want to visit your tombstone. i want to do those things in movies where they talk to the tombstone asking for advice because i know im at that point. i don’t know what to do right now and im a really really bad point. i’m trying my best these days but it doesn’t seem like enough to myself, or to anyone these days.

i know i’m speaking to absolutely nothing when i write these words; but it feels a little bit therapeutic. just a tiny bit.

every once in a while, spotify will shuffle this song (the one in the title) and i immediately cry. it’s a beautiful song, but obviously about death, the idea of fearing death, and understanding knowing the end.

i saw you in a dream today. or actually, i thought i saw someone else because i was looking for someone else who wore that same color jacket. i knew it wasn’t you. i knew it was a dream. i was able to tell based on how absurd it was, but because i knew it was a dream i took full use of it.

my brain decided to take an older version of you, one where you could walk and talk and have your old personality back.

you kissed me on the forehead. i hugged you for as long as i could before waking up.

all i’ve been thinking about is the idea that if i don’t think of someone, they’ll fade away. if they’re not here on earth, or even if they’re not in front of me, i’ll just. forget.

i’ve been thinking about you a lot. mostly because i think you’re a reminder that things just. end. and there’s nothing we could do about it.

i’m scared to lose the memories i have with you, mostly because they all began when i was a kid. i’m sure there’s plenty of things i’ve forgotten about growing up and it’s scary to think there’s some fun story with you that i’ve forgotten.

i’ve been listening to a song where they mention “we want to die in the presence of loved ones”. i remember hearing that your other sister rented a hotel nearby to be closer since you’ve stopped eating, my mother rushing on a plane to get back. my mother missed it. i didn’t know any of this was happening.

i’m scared of things that end and it’s terrifying to know what i probably would think would last forever as a kid, coming to an abrupt end.

you’re not here to see my apartment in dallas or the new job i have. i turn 25 in a few days and im scared of getting older. im scared of things that end and things that are ending.

i still wonder about your things and i’m scared to ask where they went. i know the answer. i know they’re sitting in some landfill, every prized possession you’ve ever had. every teacher award, school newspaper clippings, drawings from students, etc. all thrown away rotting in some landfill. something of such importance to someone, now becoming one with the earth i guess. sounds beautiful in a way, but it’s terrifying and isolating to think about.

it’s been a whole year since your death and it’s just strange to think about. i’m getting older and that means my brain is filing up with more and more things and making space for it - meaning i’m forgetting about you more. it’s not that i want to, i just know it’s an inevitable thing.

i’ll forget about the books and photos you had next to your computer, the way you would alphabetize all of your students names for their textbooks, the way you kept room temperature diet coke, or maybe how you thought you should keep leftovers in a microwave (i can’t believe i’m the one worried about botulism).

i’m going to forget all of this and only remember what it was like to be at your funeral. i wish i cried at the funeral. i wish it was a real funeral. i wish there was a motorcade and i wish more people showed up. i wish there was more to this than a final ending.

i'm scared of final endings. i’ll never finish the harry potter trilogy or finish a video game. i want them to always be never finished. i don’t want things to end and i never wanted to see your life end. yes, i know it’s unrealistic. it’s wishful thinking and desires. i’m allowed to have them, just as you did. i wish i could tell you about my new job. my new apartment. i wish i could show you everything that’s been new. i wish i could show you how much weight i lost, i bet i’d be unrecognizable to you.

too bad i’ll never know.

i’ve been going to goodwill a lot and it’s so strange to see people’s lives just fully out on display. i sometimes like to imagine the stories behind some of the items, but also get sad looking at some. you see things like kids toys and wonder if they grew out of them or the kid is no longer here. or the amount of shirts that are weirdly funeral themed. notebooks with people’s name written on them, but no actual words written in them.

i think because of that i had a dream i visited your grave site, or grave wall really. i just remember being so angry and sad. there was this table in the room (even though your real spot is outside) and i just hit hitting my fist against it. over and over just so upset to the point i thought i’d start bleeding. i remembered how my dad put a toy car in your spot so you’d be buried with the car you’ve always wanted. just thinking about that just made me more and more upset to the point i thought i’d break the entire table.

i had a dream i was back in your classroom. it didn’t make sense to me and you were on your computer trying to figure out some reading software you were using for your students. you wanted to figure out if it was worth just trying to grade the papers on the computer or just grade them by hand. you asked for my opinion about it and i immediately knew this was a dream.

i knew it by the way the website looked too modern and the way you spoke in such full normal sentences. i haven’t heard you spoke like that in years and you weren’t wearing your chemo wig. it felt like i was 10 years old again but i knew better as a 25 year old.

i just kept saying this wasn’t real, you’re not real, none of this is real and immediately woke up in tears wanting to scream.

i haven’t thought about you as a teacher in years. your best teacher of the year award

your house just got bought. my mother texted me excited, every one in the family group chat with thumbs up emojis, confetti emojis, and genuine joy that a weight has been lifted off of everyone’s shoulders.

it feels selfish to wish the house wasn't sold. i think about how you got it just so you could live closer to my sister and i. you said you wanted to see how we’d grow up. you got to see me go to NYC, but aren’t seeing me get my degree. you saw my sister pregnant, but never got to meet her son. it just

i hate ending chapters. this feels like it’s finally over, the story is like, officially done. it’s gone gone. you're gone and now the house is too. the room where i remember spending so much time in over the summer, the bed sheets that you picked out, just…everything is gone. all of it. it’s sold and now it’s owned by someone else or in a landfill. your entire life is just, gone.

i haven’t thought about you in a while and i’m sorry. the memory of you feels like it’s fading every day and i’m forgetting more and more things about you. someday i’m going to forget everything except a few bullet points and that scares me.

it scares me to think about how much and how fast things change so quickly. i don’t want to forget you. i don’t want to grow up. i want everything in life to be on pause while i try to figure this all out. i wish i could talk to you and hang out.

i wish you were still a teacher and i could hear all of the gossip of the other teachers and students. you could tell me about the budget cuts and how the district is changing things. maybe you could mention the fair y’all have every year and how excited you are to help decorate it.

i wish i could hear you talk about anything. it’d be such a good distraction from everything nowadays. everything is so peak and scary. it don’t use to be. maybe im rose colored glassing it, but i think it didn’t use to be this bad.

your house sold today and i don't know how to feel about that. i saw it a few times after it got fully cleaned and prepped for the new owners. my parents repainted all of the walls, the plumbing got fixed, we went through 3 realtors, and eventually we landed on a couple moving to town with a cat.

it’s weird seeing the house so empty for a few months. i don’t really know how everything left - i’m assuming the furniture got donated to habitats for humanity and clothes to goodwill. maybe an estate sale?

it was weird seeing rooms that you so meticulously decorated be stripped of everything you poured your heart over. i worry that someday i’ll forget the patterns of the bedsheets and the curtains. the way that the couch would squeak with the littlest of movements and the recliner never really fully reclined.