How To Parent Yourself

Do you know? I’m still trying to figure it out. I wrote an essay to try and get to the bottom of it. Only I can’t share it with you until it gets published. So for now, here’s an excerpt that I really loved:

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You go to a funeral home overlooking a valley. The same place where they buried your friend, Jonny. When he died, you were both 19 and you didn’t even feel a thing because you were still bent out of shape about your dad dying. And now, he’s so far down on your list of things to try to feel that you feel guilty about not feeling anything about him. Death overshadows death, outdoing itself. The guy at the funeral home, a greasy-looking guy in an ill-fitting suit, asks “is this for immediate use or are you planning for the future?” All three of you, you, your brother, and your tio, immediately realize that he’s a salesman. Your heart sinks. You tell him it’s for your mom who just died and the three of you settle on a plot but don’t put a deposit down. The next day, you have your aunt go pay for that same plot “for the future” and you save a few thousand dollars. No one is going to sell your tio, he won’t get got.