My Absence

Hi, friends.

I haven’t posted in a while. On June 11th, my mom had a major, unexpected heart attack; she lost brain function in the early hours of June 12th, and passed away that morning.

The past (nearly) three weeks have been some of the hardest of my life. My mom and I always struggled to be close. Really struggled. And unlike with my dad, who died five years ago, there was so much unresolved with my mom. There’s so much we never said. We had just decided, only weeks before she died, to start going to therapy together. We wanted to be closer. We wanted to get better. We never will.

I don’t know how to live with that yet.

For the first two weeks, I stayed in Minneapolis, spending time with my family and a few close friends. There was near-constant activity. Kartik, the dogs, and I moved from my brother’s to a hotel to an Airbnb to a different hotel. We started to go through things at my mom’s place. We arranged her celebration of life. We focused on the many logistics of death.

Now that I’m home, the silence is overwhelming. There’s no “returning to normal” after a loss, yet that’s what the world around you inevitably does.

I’m giving myself a break from Substack for another few weeks. If you decide to stick around, thank you ♥️