You wanted something different.

It simply feels so bittersweet that you are finally allowing yourself to live out your life in the way you have wanted for so long, and he won’t be there to see it.

A CONTINENT ENGULFED BY KATIE R MCKAY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 120

Your world opened up at the exact same time as it collapsed. It was as if someone had taken their thumbs and dug into your world like a ripe peach and removed the pit, leaving emptiness where there had once been substance and no hope of bouncing back to form, yet exposing new, tender areas as well.

One day you were standing in your new apartment surrounded by friends and acquaintances welcoming in a new era in a new city and feeling so full of love and warmth and joy that you felt it might all spill out of your mouth and fall right onto the floor in front of you.

The next day you were waking up to a brutal hangover and the phone call you dreaded.

For years you had come to fear that any phone call might be the one, even the robocall that didn’t leave a message. Your mother’s name on the phone was the worst. Was this it? You couldn’t shake the feeling that this time it was, time after time.

That morning you reached for the phone and you saw the name: Mom. “Hello?” Your mother was an early riser. Was she calling just to chat? “What’s up?”

“So,” your mother said. “Dad died last night.”