Content Warning: graphic descriptions of death and decomposition It was a while before my father’s body was found. His girlfriend was out of town, his workplace was an app based out of Salt Lake City, and he lived on his own. His next door neighbor on one side, a sheriff in a neighboring county, kept odd hours due to her work schedule, so she didn’t notice anything was amiss at first. The day the trash pickup was scheduled, she did notice Dad hadn’t put out his bins by the curb. But instead of thinking something was wrong, she assumed she must have got the days wrong. He was that reliable. The neighbors on the other side were snowbirds who had already left Florida for the season.
Achingly beautiful.