I looked up “postmortem” b/c I wasn’t sure what it meant exactly. Turns out we’ve got two very appropriate definitions going on here: “discussion of an event after it has occurred” and “occurring or done after death”, so this is most definitely The Postmortem Post. This past week was one of the most bizarre of my life. I can’t put the poignant and suffocatingly fearful ache of losing one’s mother into words, so I’m not even going to try. But, oddly, this week wasn’t all bad. I really like my family. My husband is just a very, very cool guy in too many ways to count. My dad is a classy man, salt of the earth and has an incredibly understated and wickedly sharp sense of humor, I’m In Love with my sister, and my BIL has a heart of gold and is hysterical. So if you have to sit with a dead body for a couple hours until the coroner can arrive, have hospice tell you they will be leaving the empty hospital bed in the middle of the living room for 3 days until they are able to schedule a pick-up, spend the night sleeping on the way-too hard floor of your dad’s house with your sister b/c you don’t want to be alone, have the funeral director make you sign a form confirming your understanding that creamation is “non-reversible”, plan a heart-breaking memorial service, order boatloads of daffodils for the altar b/c for decades, your mom sold them every year in droves for the American Cancer Society long before she was ever diagnosed, shop for a black dress for your obnoxiously huge postpartem body, convince your father that his 30+ yr. old striped suit might not be “the best choice” for his wife’s funeral and it’s time to brave the meanswear section for something a bit less moth-ridden, beg dear friends for childcare, sort through all old pics and spend subsequent 2 hrs. bawling your head off to the point of migraine, remember how it felt to have your mom attempt to brush a tear off your cheek on her deathbed…well, this was the crew to do it with. More than one bellly-aching laugh this week, amist the tears and seriously looking forward to the five of us tipping a 40 for our homie.
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