There’s something strange about this space.
Its Not the end, its not the beginning, it isn't even the middle...it's the waiting.
The part where someone is still here, still breathing, still talking… but not quite the person you’ve known your whole life. The part where time stretches and collapses at the same time. Where one day feels unbearably long and then suddenly weeks have passed and you don’t know how.
I’m in that place right now.
Weirdly what makes this even harder is that I’m not unfamiliar with loss. But I am very unfamiliar with this side of it.
I’ve spent more than a 15 years as a nurse — much of it in emergency rooms. I’ve stood beside beds where everything moved fast. Where there was urgency, noise, action — and then suddenly stillness. I’m used to a moment. A line in the sand. A before and an after.
I know how to function there.
This is different.
This is a slow walk.
This is in and out of reality.
This is watching someone fade and then come back just enough to confuse you.
This is questioning everything you thought you understood — about illness, about people, about your own memories.
This kind of losing doesn’t announce itself. It lingers. It rearranges things quietly. It asks you to sit in uncertainty for longer than feels humane.
And I don’t have muscle memory for this.
Some days I feel steady.
Other days I feel like a child again — confused, angry, protective, resentful, guilty — sometimes all at once.
This process doesn’t just affect the person at the center of it.
It ripples outward.
It rearranges families.
It brings old wounds to the surface.
It makes you question dynamics and stories you thought were solid.
It makes you ask things you never wanted to ask.
There’s a version of grief people are comfortable with — the soft, saintly kind. The kind where you say only good things. The kind where everything gets wrapped up neatly and spoken about in past tense.
This isn’t that.
This is complicated grief.
Messy grief.
Grief that doesn’t know where to sit.
This is loving someone who is still here while slowly realizing nothing will ever be the same again.
There are moments of tenderness.
There are moments of frustration.
There are moments of closeness — and moments where the distance feels unbridgeable.
And through all of it, life keeps going.
Laundry still gets done.
Dinner still needs making.
Kids still need rides.
Which feels cruel in its normalcy.
I’m not looking for encouragement here.
There’s no reframing this.
There’s no outrunning it.
I know the instinct — to distract, to numb, to not feel a fucking thing. But I also know this kind of grief is patient. It waits. It doesn’t disappear when you sober up.
So I’m letting it be here.
Messy.
Awful.
Heartbreaking.
This isn’t a lesson.
This isn’t a redemption arc.
This isn’t a conclusion.
This is just what it looks like to love someone while walking through something you can’t fix or speed up.
It hurts.
And It’s complicated, and nothing feels like it makes sense.
I hate how heavy it is. And still, I know it’s a privilege to walk this stretch of the road at all, to stay close enough to ease what I can.
It's just hard...and he's my Dad🫶