The Bail Bondsman's Children

I flew to Chicago for work on the 19th with plans a spending five days there with my team from work.

On the 20th my brother called me and said "It's about that time. The hospice nurse said..." and recounted the signs of death that were upon our dad. No pulse in his extremities, no body fluids exiting as normal, labored breathing, non-responsiveness etc.

My brother had to be there, face to face, to see it. I feel two things about that, On one hand I'm so sorry he had to witness that. On the other hand I'm relieved that he, the new head of the family, was there to shepherd the process. I knew things would go as they should with him there.

The next morning he called me to say dad had made his exit. It was time for me to go home, one more time.

And since then I've been ...I don't know what.

I've come to think that there is a grief threshold. As in, you can only feel SO MUCH grief and then you can't feel any more. It is a well that is not bottomless, there is a bottom and when you are full you can't experience more sadness. It's not that it's less, it's just that it's not more. I find it a little disturbing in a way because I expected to be MORE sad, or additionally sad.

I'm not. People ask me how I am and I say fine. They ask how my family is and I say fine. That's true. I'm not ok. But I'm FINE. I'm numb. I'm functioning. I laugh and have fun with people but part of me isn't there. I suppose it will pass. Maybe. Probably.

Orphaned at 47, my brother at 36, my other brother at 26, we're now at a different place and it's nice to have someone standing here with me. But by the same token it's the most alone feeling.

Grief is weird. Grief is hard. You're just supposed to get over it and I think that's unfair.

In your grief, as you mourn your parents, you learn what you've mutually taken away from them. We could say Mom taught us to THINK on our own, to be strong, to read, 100000 awesome things that made us who we are.

And we decided that among the things dad taught us, is very definitely who NOT to write bail for. Roofers, painters, landscapers, lot lizards - these people are NOT good bets for going to court. Don't write their bail. Strippers? Heck yes. They'll go to court. They gotta keep earnin! We realized that "You wouldn't write their bail" is a judgment we use - and cracked up when it occurred to us.

We're the bail bondsman's children, now orphans. Seriously, don't write bail for roofers. Just don't do it.

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