Thank you thank you on both counts! I am feeling so much better, and once my dad quits chemo, I think he will too. He just has two more rounds, and then he's free!

I think I've got to find a way to reframe that ending as a new beginning just like you say. Somebody else in the comments mentioned Angel, and that's a good comparison. Everybody clearly dies at the end of Angel, except they don't really; there's a comics arc after, and they get to live after some convolutedness. So that's how I need to start thinking about it.

I am going to a meeting today, and I am going to write the shit out of some dire pandas during that meeting, just you watch!