I fell. Clutching at the precipice, on the brink of sanity, trying to believe, but afraid to know – I fell from my chair and curled up, sobbing. The monitor screen glared mercilessly somewhere above, the obituary and accompanying news article burned into my memory.

An accident at 3 AM. Drunk, driving home from a goddamned baseball game—baseball! What the hell? He never did anything like that with me. Ran into a concrete barrier and went through the windshield. Decapitated. Declared dead at scene. Only saving grace that he took no one else with him. Oh god, how am I going to tell— well, anybody? How can I deal, how can I cope, how can I—

Calm. Accept. Can’t change this. He’s dead, and that’s that. Anger, grief, denial, blah, blah, blah. Don’t give me your fucking seven stages of grief. I’m fragmented, can you understand that? Can you. Understand?

Six years later, I still burst into tears sometimes. Miss him.

He was my father, and I had to learn about his death through the internet.