Losing a loved one is a catastrophic event. It’s so catastrophic that its occurrence inevitably divides one’s life into a “pre-” and a “post-”; in my case, that is, there are two high-level categories of events: those that happened before my father died, and those that happened after. Everything else is minutiæ
I’m prompted to revisit these feelings because the father of an old acquaintance died on Saturday, relatively suddenly of a brain tumor, and being at the wake today made me think once again of my own experiences in May. The friend’s father was 53, a scant two years older than my father. It doesn’t help that I dreamed last night I visited my father just before he died, and called him on the day it happened, warning him: I have no idea how the dream ended, but clearly I know how things transpired in real life.
