Grief Sucks. And Sometimes, So Does Family.

My Mom has been dead for almost three years.

And if you’ve read any of my personal essay-type pieces, you’re probably sick to death (bad pun?) of hearing about my dead mother.

And how I helped her die.

And how her death has impacted my life.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

So, I promise that this little piece will not be about her death — well, not directly, at least.

And not all of it. Promise.

However, inevitably some of this story is about her death because let’s be honest — losing your Mom is a huge, fucking life-changing thing and even though it has been almost three years, I’m clearly still working through some shit — often through my writing here on Medium.

So, please bear with me.

Well…here we are almost three years post-Mom’s-death and looking back, it’s been…hard.

Then easier.

Then fucking impossible.

And so on and so forth.

Most days, the pain is fairly mellow…it pretty much remains dormant in the back of my mind, fooling me into thinking it’s gone.

Then, usually at the most random times and out of nowhere, it will just pop up and completely smother me with sadness, taunting me like, “HAAAAA, you thought I was gone, but — SUPRISE, I’m baaaack!”

But, from what I’ve been told, that’s pretty normal when it comes to grief.

Whatever ‘normal’ means.

I’ve thought a lot about grief in the past few years (if you couldn’t tell).

Sometimes I try to think about it as a thing, like a noun, rather than a feeling.