Three years ago, the thought of my father’s death terrified me.  Today, his death seems natural and necessary.  I feel no grief, only weariness, the fatigue of daily trauma settling deeply in, the after-crisis drain.  The desire to sleep and sleep and never wake up.  I have studied grief, and taught grief, and workshopped grief.  I have grieved my father’s dying for the three-and-a-half years before his death: an anticipatory grief; a preparatory grief; a preemptive grief.  Lorry reminded me, however, that the grief will come, in all its aspects, the anger, the regrets, the deadening sadness, the looking around wondering why he is not in his recliner reading the encyclopedia, the wishing we could talk again and the wondering about why our talking was so hard, reminded me that I need to give myself the permission and the space to feel every part of it.  I am not sure such wrenching grief will come.  For now, I am balancing the compassion fatigue and saturation trauma of caregiving against the fact of loss, wanting just to sleep, and finding a sort of macabre triumph in knowing that I stepped into the battle: I responded to every need, every day, for one thousand two hundred sixty-two days, imperfections and weaknesses and all.  And I am deeply grateful for all of you who helped.

(Pictured: a funeral planter from the church choir.)