Timi (Timaleah) died on Monday at midnight, 45 days after my dad. She was 56 and the toughest woman I’ve ever personally known, as well as the most talented cook I’ve ever personally known, too. She was also mean as fuck! The night she died, I sat next to her bedside, the last person besides hospital staff to see her, and told her my dad would have asked me to be with her like I was, even if she didn’t like me much. I told her she looked good and looked ready to go wreak havoc on the other side. And that I loved her even though I didn’t like her. She and my dad were together for nearly 20 years— half my life, practically, and that’s hard to fathom because he dated so many women before her and after my mom. But she’d been close to death for so long- like seven years straight of almost dying. I don’t know how to not worry about her anymore because I’d been doing it for so long. Like so many couples who die within weeks or days of another, her quick descent felt all too predictable. Now it feels like moving away from a place I know I’ll never see again. The kind of place I’ll overfill with nostalgia. I’ll miss them deeply because they appreciated all the best parts of life: food, nature, friends, beauty. I won’t miss the unease of being close witness to their volatile relationship; I always the wondered if they’d accidentally murder each other in a crime of passion. In the early 2000s, Timi once slashed all of my dad’s tires so he couldn’t drive away from the house. My dad told me he hid all the guns from her that night. She was really his counterpart in the best and worst ways.

See ya, Timi. Just like your best friend on the phone told me she was feeling, I too am taking it harder than I ever thought I would, because I loved you, but I didn’t like you.