Three months after my mom’s funeral, my dad married her sister.

I told myself grief makes people do strange things. I repeated it like a mantra, like something learned in therapy or overheard at a support group. I clung to it because the alternative felt unbearable.

I didn’t think anything could hurt more than watching my mom die.

I was wrong.

She fought breast cancer for almost three years. By the end, she barely had the strength to sit up, but she still worried about everyone else. She asked if I’d eaten, if my brother Robert was keeping up with his bills, if Dad remembered his blood pressure medication.

Even while dying, she was parenting.

After we buried her, the house smelled like antiseptic and her lavender lotion. Her coat still hung by the door. Her slippers were half-hidden under the couch. People kept repeating the same hollow comforts.

“She’s not in pain anymore.”

“She was so strong.”

“Time will help.”

Time didn’t help. It just made the silence louder.

Three months later, Dad asked Robert and me to come over “just to talk.” His voice sounded careful, rehearsed.

When we walked into the living room, everything looked frozen in place, like Mom might walk in at any moment. My aunt Laura was sitting beside him. Mom’s younger sister. Hands folded tightly. Eyes red, but not freshly cried.

I remember thinking, Why is she here?

“I want to be honest with you,” Dad said. “I don’t want secrets.”

Dog
“We’re together,” he said. “We didn’t plan it. Grief just… brought us close.”

My brother stood up immediately. “You’re saying this three months after Mom died.”

“I know how it sounds,” Dad replied. “But life is short.”

That sentence burned. Life hadn’t been short for Mom. It had been stolen.