During the days, we stay busy. School. Work. Guitar. Chores. On the weekends, visits with friends, Fortnite for Conor, TV for me. (The Diplomat and The Night Agent are both good one-season netflix options I finished this weekend.) We went to a hockey game and stayed until 1:30 AM. We make dinner and eat it on the couch while we watch Taskmaster.

But bedtime. Man. That’s when it hits me.

We’ve always been a sentimental bunch with our “do this!” I love you sign and our “Love you mores” and our “You’re my favorites” and that’s just how we are.

For years, when I put Conor to bed, he repeats some version of, “Love you! Do this! Do this for Dad! Give Dad a hug for me! Goodnight!” and that’s just the way of things.

But now it’s just us. So it’s just, “Love you! Do this!” and I add, “Goodnight, Dad, we miss you!” and somehow manage to click off the light and close the door before the tears fall.

I’ve written before how these spaces he occupied show up in the darndest ways. You should see the pile of pillows I have on the side of his bed – an impenetrable wall I can curl up next to.

I find myself talking to him, too. Someone said to me, “You know, they say energy is neither created nor destroyed,” and that makes me feel like he’s just floating around us somehow. In the breeze. The call of the hawks in our neighborhood. The buffalo nickel I found on the beach. The songs that come on when I hit shuffle on Spotify.

I greet him with a “Hi sweetheart” and just keep swimming. Hoping that he’s hearing our goodnight messages and that he agrees that right now Conor should be allowed to play more video games than normal.

When the grief hits – when an elephant sits on my chest and my nose starts to tingle way in the back and my face crinkles up to release the tears – it stops me in my tracks. And I sit down where I am and sob until I can’t any more.

And then, I wipe off my face -am once again reminded that, even when it feels like you won’t ever stop crying, you do – and then I find a way to be busy again. Write. Bathe. Fold the laundry.

I look at one of the dozens of family pictures we have on the wall and whisper, “I miss you, sweetheart” and keep fucking going.