Schitt's Creek

I've needed to find an escape from the ugly in the world. Social media, online fighting, the news, politics, Covid-19 stats....so I started watching Schitt's Creek. I ended up finding something perfect to preoccupy my mind for a short while. I ended up seeing an episode and I don't want to give any spoilers. It made me laugh, but it was the holiday episode. And then it made me cry because soon we will be upon our first holidays without him. It's almost November, which means Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner. Then will come January and the one year anniversary of my dad's death. Honestly, I feel I am grieving as well as one could possibly be in the middle of a pandemic after losing a parent. Some days I think about him a lot. Some days I cry a lot. Some days there are no tears, but other days the tears and the grief and the mourning and the pain feel as painful as the day he died, and the days, weeks, and months leading up to his death. I don't want to dwell. I know he isn't suffering any longer, which brings me peace. And I know that he hasn't had to be alone in his nursing home room without visitors for months and months on end. I think to myself, "Thank God he didn't live through this." He most likely would not have made it through without my mom visiting every day. Plus there was an outbreak at the nursing home he died at in March/April and the building he lived in got hit hard and many of the residents died. Then there is the suriving parent, my mom that I have to worry about. She is taking this harder than I thought she would. She's always been so tough, resilient through everything my whole life. She cries on the phone sometimes when I talk to her. She is sad and she misses him. The other day going through some Google Photo memories on my husband's phone, this picture came up that my husband took of my dad and I. I smiled when I saw it because I can feel the love in the photo. I can feel the love that we shared. I know he wouldn't want me to be sad too long, grieve too long. I finally got myself to go through messages on the answering machine because it is almost full (yes we still have a home phone and an old fashioned answering machine). I heard his voice and I smiled. My husband laughed when he heard his voice. It's both happy and sad....hearing his voice, seeing the pictures, remembering the memories, thinking of things he would say, or the things he would laugh at, things the kids say and do that he would laugh at.