I hope this all isn't too maudlin...

So, eight months. Here we are. Here I am. What. The. Fuck.

Where am I at eight months in?

Actually, not bad, considering the global pandemic and the fact that my world has been reduced to at most a five mile radius, and most my time is spent in the four walls of my house with a four legged beast for company.

The holidays. Wow, so they are here. They feel shitty already. I don’t care how much Mariah Carey you play in anticipation, they are already shitty. Love Actually cannot shake me from this feeling. I will be alone because of COVID, and it’s not really that part that I mind. It’s that it’s all over. All of it.

My dad is gone. He’s dead ( I have to say that, not because it’s the obvious, but because I have to say it, much like Harry Potter has to say “Voldemort” in a way to take away the power of the unsaid). My mom, who I’m incredibly happy for, has a new love of her life, and he’s wonderful, but you know. New love, and all that entails. The reality of my brother living in Europe has never felt more real, as travel/flights have been banned.

It’s all over.

I know that nothing in life stays the same (this too shall pass, dictates my own tattoo), but all of it gone in one year? Shitty. Not being able to create new things in my life because of a pandemic? Fucked. I’m angry and sad. It feels so unfair, unjust. It’s all over. My core family unit has evaporated into the ether.

Christmas no longer means waking up in my childhood bed to the smell of coffee brewing, rushing to the living room in anticipation of what Santa brought, and when we think my dad will arrive so we can open presents - just like we’ve done since before I can remember. The four of us together, regardless of the legal and romantic dynamics of my parents’ relationship. Christmas morning held magic for, what, 33 years or so? I suppose I should count myself lucky that I got so many years, but, goddamn, it hurts to lose.

Breathe. Just breathe.

Every one of us have a holiday season coming up this year that looks like no other that we could imagine. We are all doing our best. But part of me just wants to fly a banner over my house, pin a button on my shirt that reminds the world that my dad died. I have a gaping hole in my life. Every day that passes I’m expected to be better, to have healed more, and yet I find it hurts in a new, different way. The distance between me and my dad is only growing. It scares me. I lose him incrementally each day. This new loss is almost scarier than the deep grief I felt right after he died. What if the world forgets my dad? What if I forget him? How he made new words out of regular words, songs about our dogs? How he could be so mean, how I could get so angry at him, resent him? I’m scared that it’s all slipping away as the world turns.

My dad, my family traditions, the things I called home that were my touchstones, my magic: it’s all over.

It’s all over and new traditions are only created in solitude. I’ve considered the possibility that Holidays that don’t resemble the norm could be good, and act as a buffer between what was and what will be. The trouble is that I can only buy that intellectually. Otherwise, it just means there are limited ways of papering over the hurt. Socially distant activities really deprive the human need for a hug or a laugh or two as you swap white elephant gifts with your friends. The inebriated love we proclaim for each other in person just doesn’t happen over FaceTime or Zoom. Not that it isn’t there, it’s just not in the room.

I can create new things for myself or follow old traditions on my own, but I don’t know what is harder: trying to hold onto a past that is gone or recreating a life that has no ties to the people I love. Both seem quite lonely to me. Either way you cut it, it’s all over.

I guess that’s just the order of things, the way it goes.

Breathe. Just breathe.