A bit of Background…

On Thursday July 23rd, 2020 my mother’s body was found, dead from an apparent suicide. (I’ll save you the gory details.) On Saturday August 29th, exactly 8 months from the day my father told me words I’d never forget, I sat by his bed and held his hand as he died from pancreatic cancer. I was given 5 days of bereavement for my father (to be taken directly following his death despite COVID preventing any actual memorial from being held) and was denied bereavement for my mother.
I worked in a school, so their logic was that her death happened during the summer months and they were not therefore responsible per my contract. So I went back to work after my allotted ‘bereavement time’.
Over the following months I used my sick days, and my personal days, for those mornings when I wasn’t able to ignore the fact of what I’d lost. It was normal (and at times still is) for me to wake up sobbing. I’d generally get myself calm enough to get into my classroom, and then I’d sob some more there (I was doing teletherapy for most of the year, alone in my office since my supervisor and coworker were granted permission to work from home, my request was denied on 3 separate occasions despite medical documentation…).
On April 5th I was terminated due to ‘excessive absenteeism’.

So here’s me, in all my absurdity, building back the broken bits to explore this new reality.