Please Cut It Out, 2011

My father passed away last week. I was flying home from my business trip, and when I got home my mom gave me the news. Anytime your mom calls you at 11:45 pm, you know it’s not going to be good.
We’d been preparing as a family for the inevitable, but no amount of preparing does you any good when you actually hear it. I’m still trying to make sense of it all, but I just hope my family can make peace with his death and the cause of it.
My mom, sister and brother all flew to Boston so we could at least gather and give each other a hug in person. In a way, the repairing that happened over Christmas prepared us a little more for this, but it also sort of felt like another family gathering he wasn’t present at.
I’m not sure if the gravity of his death will really be felt until we gather once again this summer to scatter his ashes. It’s been a really rough week, but I’m very grateful to have such amazing friends checking on me every day. My apartment is filled with flowers right now, and also an amazing, chocolate-filled gift basket from Zabar's. I’m so lucky to have a wonderful family and amazing friends to take care of me when I need it.
I really need to have a heart-to-heart with 2011, because it wasn’t listening to me very well when I asked it to please be kind. 2011 is kind of a dick, and while we have a lot of work to do to make it better, it’s getting easier day by day.