It’s the last day of the year, the last of the decade. And it’s a hard one for me, because I’ve been spending these last days trying to get closer to finishing the work of dealing with my father’s death – cleaning his home, packing up his remaining things, emptying his space of, well, him.

It’s hard work. It’s brutally hard work, because it is work that I want both to finish, and to never finish. And to be struggling with the competing desires for closure (as if there ever is any) and un-closure (as if we can ever move on without any semblance of closure) in the final days, final hours, of the year is particularly difficult. I should be looking to the new year for rejuvenation. I should be looking for hope.

It is hard to look for hope when I am wrapped up in saying goodbye. When I am so sad.

I’ll find that hope, I know. But right this moment it seems so very distant, and obscure.