Time For a Break

Pop's Passing

After my Pop passed away, I lost any motivation to keep going. It was incredibly hard to find the energy to focus on anything, as my life was consumed with personal struggles. I was constantly traveling back and forth to Delaware to care for my mom, who had stage 4 cancer and was living alone. The emotional and physical toll it took on me was immense, and honestly, it left me in a place where I just didn’t know how to keep up with the project.

But let's be honest—I know that probably doesn’t matter to most of you. The struggles I was facing on a personal level might not have been important to you, and that’s fair. Life goes on, and the world continues outside of my own. I just want to be transparent about what I was dealing with and how it affected my ability to contribute to the project during that time.

Fast Forward to July

During those six months, I was home maybe 12 days. The rest of the time, I was at my mom's. I’d come home for a few days when my sister came up from Mississippi, or my brother visited. It was exhausting, but I felt like I had to be there for her.

Then, fast forward to July. I left her house on June 28th to get home in time for the fireworks with my family and avoid the traffic. I left thinking my brother would be there to help her. The last text I received from my mom was, “I fell again, nothing broke,” on July 4th.

I found out later that my brother, who was supposed to be there for her, had his CPAP machine on in the room farthest from my mom. He wasn't there when she needed him. She had fallen in the middle of the night and laid on the bathroom floor for seven hours in her own urine. I was out of town on a small job and received the call on July 9th, telling me my mom was in rapid decline. I went up there the next day and didn’t leave her side. She grew progressively worse, and we called in hospice care. I had to watch my mom slowly fade away, and she passed on the 15th.

Most of my family is now gone, and it’s hard not to feel that loss in every part of my life. It’s difficult to describe what it feels like. I feel empty, like nothing really matters anymore. Even now, I’m still in shock over how quickly Pop passed and how fast my mom’s health deteriorated. It all happened so quickly, and I’m still trying to process it.