1.16: Instruction

     My parents died two years ago, a month apart from one another. Sadness eluded me for a while; there were no instructions for grieving two parents at once while also working through their mail and their medications and all of their antiques and their money and notifying people. I have two older brothers, but neither was capable of doing all of THE THINGS for various reasons. One sister-in-law was really helpful, as she is (one time, when the owner of the place my parents were renting left me an angry voice mail, I simply wrote down the number, called my sister-in-law, and said "please deal with this" and she did, because I was just... done). 

    The grief doesn't really go away, but it slides into the cracks and takes a bit of a nap and you're just going along your day, cleaning out the front hall closet that you haven't even opened in a year, and you find a strongbox that was your dad's and you open it, curious, and you see coins and that's not a big deal because you have inherited your father's plethora of coins, and they are shoved in corners all over the house, and you notice two pink Sweet'n'Low packets tucked into the coins and you realize that he had taken this strongbox to an antique show for change as my mother sold her antiques (she always needed "the pink stuff" for her iced tea) and you burst into teats and they just won't stop.

    There are no instructions for grief, and maybe there should be: please be careful when opening old strongboxes because you might be reminded of your parents' little quirks and feel their humanity as a throb in the middle of your chest and you miss them all over, as if you'd just gotten that phone call from the hospital and you hold your dad's hand as he nods, slowly, that they can take her off life support and then a month later you can't get your dad to answer the phone and you walk into his house and he's cold in his bed, and you sit on the edge of the bed and just talk to him until you're ready to call your sister-in-law to please come be there. 

    No, there are no instructions for this.