Checked

So I guess it's national daughter day. I don't have a daughter, but I am a daughter. Both my parents are gone now, and today I received my inheritance from my dad's estate. Since I found out it was coming this week, I've had a lot of emotions about it that I didn't expect. When I saw the number on the check I found it oddly sad. Not because of what the number was, but because that's what my parents measured out to in the end, on paper. It's the legal finish to their story.

I know there's more to them in both memory and legacy, but receiving that check was a sort of final punctuation that sort of knocked me backwards. Living states away gives me a bit of insulation, in that I don't have to see the places every day that used to hold them, and now hold only memories.

Distance gives me the luxury of seeing my dad tinkering in the garage and my mom softly singing a lullaby to my baby brother. Not seeing strange cars in our old driveway allows me to see them in the early years, when Mom's red hair was an abundant mass of vibrant waves, and Dad was a handsome goofball who would build anything and everything for his new wife and his suddenly large family.

They are walking hand-in-hand in the evening after Mom didn't finish her over-peppered baked potato, sharing breath with maple trees and happily unaware that her remission would end soon. They are dancing in the living room, Dad in his black Stetson hat, and Mom looking up at him with so much love that you'd swear it should make them immortal. They are any age and any place I want them to be. They are alive, because I don't have to be reminded every day that they are not. But now I have this check. Now the proof has come and broken the veil that the miles gave me. Now their ended lives have found me here and settled on me for what might be the first time. I'm not sure that I've ever let myself fully accept that they're gone when I'm here. It feels very raw, and I didn't expect it.