My first father left the family when I was about twelve years old. It was a normal divorce, followed by a flight from what I presume was failure and shame. However, I view my step-father as my second father. He spent more time, money and energy raising me, so he deserves the title. He was whip smart, and a person gained logic and reasoning skills just by talking to him. He was a kind soul, dedicated to his family and community. The church was packed for his funeral.

If there can be found the greatest catastrophic failure within the domain of ones work, it must surely lie within the field of medicine. Where else do they have an eventual 100% failure rate?

The year after Sheba died, he passed. The bleak reality of life is depressing, so I won’t dwell about it here, or else this post could go on forever.  The whole year that followed, my thoughts generally wandered to the subject of death, the after-life and the surreal nature of the universe. I suppose anyone who really knows me could say that I regularly visit these topics, but this past year they were viewed through the lens of which my own mortality was crystal clear.

This past January of 2018 marked a year that he passed. That awful sadness was still there, but in January, it seemed fresher because it reminded me of that specific sadness that hit me when I arrived in Georgia to be with my family. It was accompanied by shock. The wallop-in-the-face of “it happened to one of us”. It was the duality of general disbelief and having to function in a new reality.

During the funeral, I remember being unable to cope with this duality. He should have been sitting next to my mother, at his funeral. My brain could not process the directly conflicting information, and it got caught in a loop between these two thoughts, threatening to shut down unless I chose one direction over the other. I think the only reason I did not faint was that right then, his newborn grandson, who happened to be sitting right in front of me, started to make a great fuss. This gave my brain a third direction to choose: distract the baby and let my older (step-)sister focus on the funeral.

When he died, I felt like it was all over the town’s news. Articles appeared about him in the newspaper, including one written by my mother. It was reassuring to see his dedication to his community had made an impact. His life made a difference to individuals and institutions. How many of us can say that about ourselves?