Just an observation recorded in the wee hours of January this year, because I tend to overshare.

The truth is that in the future, if someone felt like wasting their time by going back and examining my life, they’d would comment that Patrick’s death had a lasting impact on me.

Yes, it was tough losing John and Willie, but perhaps because Patrick’s death never reached a conclusion in terms of expectations and the estate and all the other stuff, it never felt like that transition period ever passed.

It may also be true that because losing Patrick made me the patriarch of the family, it ruptured what little family relationships I had left with my siblings. It’s a very heavy weight that I have never completely shaken off.

The rest of the world is much darker now too, making things much worse. We have the nightmare in the White House [Trump] and his GOP Politburo cronies, and all the damage—devastation even—that his policies have wrecked upon us, but those are supplemental, not integral, to this observation.

Oh, what the hell. It’s 12:40 AM on January 31, 2020