My Father Takes The Next Step And I Am Weird

My father is not a man who was built for solitude. He needs to have people around; he needs talking and touching and interaction. He's an extrovert to an extent my introverted brain frankly finds a little hard to understand.

My mother's death hit him very hard. I mean, Hell, it hit me pretty hard, too. But for him it wasn't just the grief. It was also the solitude. Despite the best efforts of family and friends, and even despite getting a renter to live in the house with him, he was just spending a lot more time alone than was really good for him. There were also some medical issues that interfered with several of his hobbies (playing and repairing musical instruments, for example) and left him even more cut off. It was bad enough to have us all pretty worried even as recently as last June.

Somewhere in there, though, he acquired a girlfriend. Or -- I suspect more accurately -- she acquired him. I'm not certain of the exact timeline, but then I don't think my dad really is either. But this was someone he'd known for years, who'd been part of his music-playing circles, someone who'd also been in a long-term marriage and (relatively) recently lost a spouse. And it seems to have grown gradually out of the two of them spending time together.

Y'all, for the past several months my father has been happier than I've seen him since my mom died. He's out of the house, he's doing things, they're doing things...

So this past weekend, they got married. It was a relatively quick ceremony -- they plan to have a big All The Friends And Family party later. Possibly more than one.

And I thought I was okay with this. I still do, actually. Think I'm okay with it, I mean. Like, I can't think of anything about this that really bothers me. I don't see it as a betrayal of my mother; I'm not worried about how this might affect finances or inheritance; I honestly like the woman; and like I said, my father seems to have undergone some sort emotional resurrection and I'm grovelingly grateful for that.

Which makes it deeply weird to me that this one, relatively brief ceremony (with a nice meal afterwards) seems to have completely consumed my emotional energy for the weekend, but it did. I mean, I wasn't completely useless for the rest of the weekend, but there was an awful lot of I Shall Sit In The Back Room And Play Video Games and at one point I actually fell asleep while still holding the controller in my lap.

I suppose it's just the intensity of it. I suppose good emotions can be just as draining as bad emotions, if they're strong enough. But I really didn't expect to react this way, whatever "this way" actually is, and I'm bothered both by the reaction itself and by the fact that I don't really feel like I understand my own reaction.

Anyway. My dad is married again, and enjoying life again, and I'm deeply grateful for that.