“How are you feeling right now?”
When this post goes live, I’ll be somewhere on the road to North Carolina. It’s a bittersweet trip, the kind where joy and sorrow insist on riding in the same car.
On one hand, I’m looking forward to time with family — seeing Lizzi and Sully, my niece Raegan and her crew, my brother Jeff and his wife Paige, my nephews Andrew and Jackson, and my stepmother, Carol. We’ll laugh, play golf, go ziplining, share meals, and make memories.
But the heart of this trip is different. We’re gathering to scatter Dad’s cremains. He died nine months ago, and yet this feels like the final page of his story — the moment that makes goodbye feel real.
So how am I feeling right now? Happy and sad. Both at once. And maybe that’s how life works most of the time: joy and grief in the same breath, love and loss side by side.
Copyright © 2025 Doug DeBolt.
I felt the same way when I scattered my father’s ashes too. Bittersweet is such an apt term to describe this feeling. I just spent some time last night in a dream with my dad. Felt real…told him I loved him once I remembered in the dream that he wasn’t in this life with me anymore.