{"id":1152,"date":"2009-12-31T00:09:32","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T00:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/theirbadmother\/2009\/12\/counting-down-the-days.html"},"modified":"2009-12-31T00:09:32","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T00:09:32","slug":"counting-down-the-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2009\/12\/counting-down-the-days.html","title":{"rendered":"Counting Down The Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> 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<\/a> of, well, him.<\/p>\n

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<\/i>-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.<\/p>\n

It is hard to look for hope when I am wrapped up in saying goodbye. When I am so sad.<\/p>\n

I’ll find that hope, I know. But right this moment it seems so very distant, and obscure.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the last day of the year, the last of the decade. 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