Since about Thanksgiving, when we first had the inclination that something was wrong with my grandma, my life has mainly been focused on the health of my father or grandma. There wasn’t alot I talked about at first, I didn’t want to talk about what was going on. The holidays passed, and grandma got her diagnosis and dad left to go start getting his clearances for the transplant. The intesity of worrying about them increased. At one point my sister commented, “It feels like it’s all anyone talks about”. And it was. All anyone talked about. What else was there to talk about?

Then came February. It feels to me a little like time has stopped since February. I went to sleep and am just now waking up from a nightmare. One in which I spent three weeks watching my dad’s health decline rapidly. A nightmare where I came home and said goodbye to my grandmother. Helped plan her funeral and then attended it. A nightmare where I got a phone call first telling me the good news about dad’s transplant. A dream where I started to hope that he’d make it. That he’d come home and live to tell the story. Where we could tell him what happened while his health declined, the things he wouldn’t remember. Then I got a second phone call, the day after burying grandma. That dad had 12 hours to live. A nightmare where I said goodbye to my dying father. And then planned his funeral. And attended it.

The funny thing about waking up from this particular nightmare? Is that I’m waking up to find that it’s all true. That my life is bereft of two very important people. That my future has lost their presence in my life.

Tomorrow I will wake up and go to work. I will plan the month of April and not warn my clients that I may need to leave again. I will plan to spend every weekday during the month of April at work. The weekends relaxing, cleaning. I have to start the serious business of grieving. Of becoming the girl who no longer takes grandma grocery shopping on the weekends. Who no longer has a father to call and ask a question about my car.

I have to move on. I have to wake up from the nightmare and start living my life again. I need to do this while giving myself the time to grieve. I just don’t know how. What do I talk about?