He died last night.

The hospital called at six this morning. I'm listed as next of kin. I'm the only kin there is.

So the funeral falls to me. I spent the day on the phone with a funeral director whose voice was so soft it felt like being wrapped in cotton. The cost is obscene. I can't bring myself to resent it, though. Somebody has to put him in the ground, and there's nobody left but me.

Here's the ugly truth, since nobody reads this: I'm not sad. I keep reaching for grief and closing my hand on something else. Something that feels a lot like relief. He spent his last years turning into something I didn't recognize - paranoid, bitter, rotting in plain sight - and I think part of me said goodbye to him a long time ago.

I don't like what that says about me.