Just when it seemed...

like things might get a little "normal"

My dad (who raised me) died last week.

For fuck’s sake.

14 months after my mom.

It was quick, unexpected, but I had enough time to be with him. Complicated, but I went to see him because he wasn’t recovering well from an unplanned surgery . Things were looking better and I left with the assumption that we all had—it would be a longish recovery, but looking good.

He died less than 12 hours after I got home.

I feel bereft that I wasn’t with him when he died, though there was no way to know things would take a turn. My brother and I overlapped by a few hours and he was with our dad when everything changed for the worse and he soon died.

Also I feel grateful that I could be with my dad, tend to him in a way I couldn’t for my mom.

He was an absolutely wonderful, gentle man.

He never knew I met my biodad. He knew I put myself in a situation where it could happen but he never asked about it. Intentional or not, it was never discussed.

It feels okay that way. In fact if he’d known, I’d worry that I’d somehow contributed to his death the way that I felt (or others felt, maybe) I did to my mom’s. Or that I in any way might have made him feel, even for a moment, like he wasn’t entirely my dad.

All of that, and I am so, so, so sad that he died.