Grief.
It sucks. It’s completely unique. And it’s entirely one’s own. Or at least that’s what someone told me after my father died this summer.
Solitary. Maddening. Confusing. Frustrating. Depressing as all hell.
Grief is a form of madness. No one else wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole. No one wants to understand you. No one will understand you. Because it really is the madness of one.
Everyone’s story will be different.
Here’s mine.
Shock. If there’s one word to describe the state I was in the couple of months 
after my father passed away, that would be it. Even though the doctor told us weeks, I never figured for a moment he would die the night before my birthday. Never. I thought he would linger on. Make lots of trouble and headache for my mom and me. And kill us both before he’d go.
Seriously. That’s what I thought.
After the funeral, I was pissed. Pissed because I finally realized how much the relatives on my father’s side sucked. No one wanted to come to his services. Not even his younger brother. His only surviving sibling. The asshole came at the last minute, dragged by his wife. And no, he didn’t even bother to wear a dark suit.
We didn’t even have enough pallbearers. The funeral director and his posse had to roll up their sleeves and shove my father’s casket into the back of the hearse. Oh yeah. It was a sterling send off.
I hate it. The superstitions, the traditions, the little this and that regarding funerals. There is so much fucking superstition and fear surrounding death in the Chinese culture that people will find any excuse not to come. Because if you never attend a funeral, you’ll never die. Immortality by avoiding funerals. Nevermind the Fountain of Youth. Christ.
Whatever.
I wanted to hit the fast-forward button to zoom through the dreary, scary days before me. But apparently, I’d lost the remote control on life. I wanted my friends to come and comfort me. But my cell phone remained eerily silent and my inbox empty. I got two sympathy calls. Both useless. Both done out of propriety. Both from people who couldn’t wait to get off the phone.
No one wanted to share grief. Money, food, good times. People come flocking like a pack of hungry wolves. But grief. Nah, that’s all for me.
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