Final Departures in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

Honestly, my life stayed mostly the same for six months. I was working so much that I had almost no time for anyone or anything. Anytime I did go out, it was mostly rote and full of stupid choices.

Finals happened late-October, then my birthday happened with little fanfare, and I have spent most of November recovering. Working six days a week was overwhelming and left me completely drained of energy.

However, I learned something very helpful during the whole situation. I only taught half-days so I assumed it would be less work, but that was not the case. I was exhausted all the time and that was when I realized that teaching for me is exactly like my stand-up comedy used to be. Getting in front of a class and teaching is just as taxing as performing, and it doesn’t matter if I do it for 1 hour or 5 hours, I get just as tired.

So this term I have condensed my work schedule to just three days a week. I am determined to have time to rest over the next several months because I was hardly alert during the last six months.

The main reason I started writing is because I saw that Matt’s father died. My heart breaks for him. I know his relationship with his family is tenuous at best, but I also know that that doesn’t necessarily make final departures easy to process. I had two different reactions to two different deaths that happened relatively close to each other.

My grandfather died in a sad manner but I assume relatively peacefully. While I was sad, his death was relatively easy for me to process and did not affect me more than any other death I have experienced (and, as we all know, I have experienced a lot of death).

My grandmother died a short time later after deciding to whither and let herself die. It was one of the most horrific deaths I’ve ever witnessed and her corpse-like face smiling at me still haunts me to this day. Her death was like a quake that ripped open fault lines across ever facet of my life. I went mad and chose chaos over peace.

If this death for Matt is like the former, I hope he’ll heal quickly. If it’s like the latter, I want him to feel steadied and not adrift, which is how I felt.

Death is something we all have to come to grips with and the passage of someone so close to us redefines our relationship with life.