A New World

This past week has been a week filled with change. This week is the first week the world, for me, has existed without my dad in it. I have been preparing for this inevitability for a long time yet somehow I was not prepared when the time came. It is even more difficult today than it was when he died a week ago. 

My dad spent his final year mostly alone. The timing of the pandemic could not have been worse. It is frustrating that a man who spent his entire life in service of others was forced to end his days isolated because so many of us cannot wrap our minds around the concept that freedom comes with responsibility. I am gobsmacked at the irony of him dying alone while others are out enjoying themselves at an illegal rodeo the very same week.

“My father said there were two kinds of people in the world: givers and takers. The takers may eat better, but the givers sleep better.” — Marlo Thomas (b. 1937)