From the Fog

My dad died. 

So I haven't been writing.

Makes sense.

Not much else does.

It will be a month tomorrow. It was pretty horrific in the perspective of being his daughter. Plugs, cords, decisions, death rattle, last breath. In terms of being a human who knows I will some day die myself, it was a pretty good passing, and I hope to be afforded the same sheltered passage when it's my time.

What I'm left with is trying to figure out the day to day. What was a matter of routine is now a disproportionately challenging puzzle. I'm doing a bad job at work, I'm being distant from my friends, and am filled with anxiety on how to take care of all the things my dad used to manage along with all the usual things in my life.

Writing was the thing that brought me the most comfort during the short time that my dad was sick. It was a great distraction from the horror of the hospital - the alarming machine noises, the fellow families going in and out of the ICU, the detached doctors and noncommittal nurses - I was able to tune all that out when I was focused on my writing.

But now that my dad has died, that comfort has floated away and I'm left with nothing. Well, knitting, I have knitting. But writing has been next to impossible. I look at all the things I was involved and immersed in, and they seem like a past life rather than just the past month.

And here I am trying to write to get into the MFA program here at Portland State University where I work. It only makes sense, I want to write, it's a great program and I get to take classes nearly for free. Only, I don't know if I'll get in. My previous instructor in a graduate class here said my writing wasn't quite good enough to get in - but, maybe it could be, if I worked on it enough. So, I was working on it. But, now...

Oh well. It is what it is. I'll apply. Maybe I won't get in. I'll live. But, that's the hard part.

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

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