Fuckity Fuck Fuck Fuck

When we came back from walking around the lake on Friday night, my phone showed nine missed calls, all of them from my sister, my mother, and my cousin. Oh, shit. When I finally was able to reach my sister, she told me that my father had died.

He was 56 years old. We just didn't expect this right now.

I've spent the last two days making lists, phone calls, and meals. I'm pissed off. I'm stuck in Michigan, a place I try to avoid like some people avoid north Minneapolis. I can't believe he did this. And on a fucking Friday to boot. You can't get shit done on a weekend. It's like his last move was to piss me off as much as possible.

We weren't super close and, as the outsider coming in to clean things up, I'm going through all the paperwork he left behind and I see more and more reasons why we weren't close. It's a mess, a giant mess. My mom did some smart moves and protected herself financially in a lot of ways and I'm super proud of her and how she's dealing with all of this, but it's still a fucking morass of awfulness.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, my phone only gets reception if I drive three miles away, and my poor husband has been reduced to eating packaged foods because the kitchen here is not set up for him to eat.

I'm sure that in the weeks and months to come I'll write mushy, maudlin words devoted to his memory, but right now, just know that if he were still alive, I'd kick his ass.

According to Kubler-Ross, the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Right now I'm on anger and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be there for quite some time. Tomorrow we're doing a visitation thing and I need a better answer to "how are you doing?" than "I'm really pissed off." I'll play nice, I'll think of something, but if happen to run into me anytime soon, know that what I'm really thinking is that this sucks even worse than my first year of graduate school.