Do you know the feeling when you’re reading a good book, but you’re really tired, and you’re just waiting to finish the last few pages of the chapter, or to just finish the book? That feeling of anticipation, but also exhaustion, where you’re close to the finish line, and you just need to be done?

For the past year and seven months of my life, I have felt this feeling with my grandfather’s estate. The problem is that this was nothing like a book. It held more gravity. It had higher stakes. It had drama. It had all the makings of a work of fiction, with conflict among family, strife of someone who barely knows what they were doing, and at least one minor character meltdown.

Today, I received the final paperwork allowing me to close out this chapter of my life – to close out the estate. With a deep breath, I can say that, “I’m done.” I’m not someone prone to stress or anxiety, but I am prone to isolating myself in moments where I know there’s a problem to solve. I have an incessant need to prove to myself that I can do something on my own without help. This is clearly a carry-over from my childhood and the relationship I had with my parents. The only person I’d ever let help me in my life was always my grandfather, and with him gone, who could I ever rely on again?

This was both my greatest strength and weakness. I was never taught many skills to rely on others, or even seek help. The only reason I sought help from my grandfather ever was because he was the most consistent thing in my life. He was the person who had never given up on me, never abandoned me.

Throughout the entire estate process, I felt alone. I don’t think that I have ever felt more alone in my life. Unable to properly deal with the emotional aspect, I launched myself into a complete focus of:

• Problem 1 – tackle it, worry about nothing else unless it’s work
  • It’s solved. Great!
• Problem 2- tackle it, worry about nothing else unless it’s work
  • It’s solved. Great!
• Problem 3 – Oh goodness, it’s family – defer to my legal counsel, shut down, let them handle it, and solve it through pragmatic approach of not engaging and not making my situation worse.
  • Great, they’ve stopped.
• Problem 4 – tackle it, worry about nothing else unless it’s work
  • GREAT! It’s solved.
• Problem …. – Same response
• Problem – Isolate more
• Problem – solved
• Problem – solved
• Problem – solved
• DONE.

Breathe.

Slow down.

Moment by moment. Look back. Realize:

1. turned down a lot of fun opportunities because you’re too focused on something else, even though you’re just in a waiting game.
2. didn’t date because you thought you’d bring someone else into this mess, and you really were not dealing with your own emotions properly enough to date
3. imposed a lot of silly restrictions on yourself mentally no one else knew about
4. felt rather unmotivated
5. realize there were things you did to fight against this onslaught of bad – joining a choir, going to creative workshops, trying to join things like the NLC
6. you can forgive yourself

The hardest part about this ordeal is knowing that there are few people I’ll ever have that I can share memories of my grandfather with. My mother had her own memories. My siblings were not raised by him. The rest of my family was rather estranged. I have no one I’ll ever be able to laugh about the time I ran to my grandfather after graduating high school and nearly knocked him over. I’ll never have anyone know what it was like to come out to my grandfather. No one will ever be able to reminisce on all the memories my grandfather and I shared, and that’s hard to reconcile.

However, now, with the closing of the estate, I can say I’m done. 

• Done jumping to problem solving to see an end.
• Done keeping good people an arms distance.
• Done with this estate.
• Done with dealing with toxic people.

I’m done. And what a wonderfully powerful expression that can be.