It was 8 years ago this spring when both my parents died within a couple of months of each other. I remember feeling numb for a good amount of time afterward. Going to work, doing what I needed to do and "doing life" but feeling like I was going through the motions. The paperwork and shared responsibility for the dismantling of the remains of two lives served as a distraction, but there was still a hole.


This week the last of the parents, and for my kids- grandparents, died. That hole that I thought had healed and covered over, showed how tentative and thin that cover was and that numbness that had become so familiar, has returned. I was fortunate in that my "in-laws" were good people and not too dissimilar to my own parents, whom I also liked as people and not just parents. It makes the ending all the more difficult.