When I was six years old, my father died unexpectedly. It was shocking and sad and I had no concept of the lifelong repercussions this would have on my family and me. Looking back, at what at tiny girl I was, I realize how hard that was to try to make sense of in the moment. My very blurry memories of that day go something like this: <\/p>\n
-Get picked up from school.
\n-Wait for my mom to get home.
\n-Have my mom break the news to my brothers and me.
\n-Take a nap.
\n-Wake up from nap with my best friend’s mom sitting at the foot of my bed. <\/p>\n
In that moment, in that haze, remembering the news I’d heard earlier that day, I barely understood the next thing Nancy said to me: “He was a good man.”<\/p>\n
It meant virtually nothing to me then. It means just slightly more to me now.<\/p>\n
And yet….<\/p>\n
Today, I heard that a person I love very much, someone I have known and who has known me down to my soul since I was 18-years-old, lost her husband. Their fifteenth anniversary would have been next weekend. I was a bridesmaid in their wedding.<\/p>\n
I called her as soon as I heard. Between the story of how it happened, and me stuttering, “Oh my god” every few seconds, all I could think to say was, “He was a good man.” It’s true, and it’s the best I could do. I couldn’t make it better. I couldn’t make it worse.<\/p>\n
Tonight, I’m hugging my husband a little tighter. That’s all I can do. I’m heartbroken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was six years old, my father died unexpectedly. It was shocking and sad and I had no concept of the lifelong repercussions this would have on my family and me. Looking back, at what at tiny girl I was, I realize how hard that was to try to make sense of in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}