The emptiness and silence will get louder. Once my mom leaves, things will get darker. Right now, she’s here with us, sort of taking the place of my grandmother. She leaves next Wednesday. Then the hard work begins. It will get darker before it gets brighter. That’s how grief works.

Tomorrow night is band rehearsal. I am looking forward to being with my friends. I don’t know how long my energy will last, but I will give it a shot.

This time I’m going to go slow. After my father died in 2000, I became super man. I was superhusband, superdad, superpastor, supermusician, superson, superman. I did everything twice as fast, better, bigger, badder. Church, home, health, vision, goals, books I read, teaching, the whole bit. I did grief work, grief small groups, counseling, therapy, everything imaginable. Then, after 6 months I crashed and burned, I experienced my first of many panick attacks. I went on Paxil, an anti-depressant for over a year and finally after a lot of grief work and slowing down, I got through that dark time. I did most things alone, with few people near me, just being superman.

Why did I do that? In part I wanted to get through it all. Second, I wanted to be my dad. To be his image, to become all he was. That’s not a bad thing, except that you can’t become anything on your own strength. It will catch up to you. It did me in.

This time, I’m going one day at a time.

There is no superman.