My Dad, Part V

As before, I am going to share some personal things that involve death and concern a parent. So if that is a tough thing for you, this is a place to bail. My point in sharing this is because writing helps me, and it is my own process for what I am feeling, but also to normalize the feelings around something like this. There is grief involved, so proceed with care.

It is funny, as much as I talk about grief, that I can still find myself blindsided by grief in ways I know to expect. I spend most of my days vaguely aware that my dad is dead, and when I see a picture of him, either courtesy if a memory on my phone, the digital frame slideshow that lives on my desk, or when I notice his picture on the wall as I walk upstairs, I am reminded that there will be no more moments or memories made and captured on camera. Yet, in even those moments, I feel mostly “fine”. I won’t say good, but nothing palpably occurring, it is just another day with obligations and bills, but none of the heaviness and aching. Then, doing something like building a “big boy” bed for my son for his birthday comes about and wrecks me. My daughter helped me (some of the time “helping” and towards the end, actually doing so), and I am reminded of the projects I worked on with my dad. But, more palpably, I am suddenly awash with the memory that he has helped me assemble the bulk of the furniture in this house. The dresser that I removed from the wall anchors he had installed when I moved in, looming over us as we assemble a similarly colored piece of Ikea furniture for my son, and it hits me as suddenly as a summer thunderstorm that I will never again build a piece with him. The loss feels acute enough that I have to keep my composure and let my daughter know that it is both a lovely moment with her and one that is also sad for me. After we finish, I go to get ready for my son’s birthday party and sob, like ugly heaving crying for a few minutes. Then I return to having my head above water and not feeling things so heavily.

That is a brief respite because as I drive to my mom’s; which in and of itself is a weird thing to say, and it is taking a lot of work to remember it is no longer a “their” house, which my daughter also catches herself saying, I remember that my son’s birthday, basically one month after my dad died, is the first of all the firsts we will have to go through as a family. I can list a timeline of all the events that we have just in the span of four months, and each one I anticipate will bring about some of these feelings. Just acknowledging that brings the burning sensation of tears rising to my eyes, and saying it aloud, I can hear my voice waver. Then, once again, life goes on as it always has and always will.

I am reminded of a Ben Folds song, one that stuck with me from the first listen, called “Fred Jones, Pt. 2”. Lyrics come to mind immeditely that “today’s just a day like the day that he started, no one has left here that knows his first name … and life barrels on like a runaway train where the passengers change, they don’t change anything, you get off someone else can get on”. I always recognized the way life goes on, no matter what I or someone else may be going through, and it feels like a New York City subway ride. Largely, it is a nameless, faceless interaction where some people are having the best day of their lives and others are drowning on their worst days, but the majority of the rest are simply existing in the doldrums of their daily existence, maybe trending to a net positive or a net negative on their day, but it is largely just another day in their lives.

It has felt weird at times to simply be living and doing daily things while my dad is dead. Like, shouldn’t the world stop spinning for a minute so we can collectively catch our breaths? But, no. It doesn’t work that way. In fact, most of the time, his being physically gone registers the same way partners from my past do. It is not the forefront of my mind, nor is it a memory I am intentionally pushing away; it simply is a memory that is not as urgent as making sure I paid the mortgage, or that I have the grocery list together and am not forgetting anything. On the one hand, that feels like I am dishonoring his memory, or saying he didn’t mean so much to me. But the truth is that life does not stop for the dead, nor for those who are grieving the dead. I still have kids, a dog, a partner, family, friends, and clients that I need and want to invest time into. There are some moments when I can feel something floating just beneath the surface, somewhere between sadness and frustration or annoyance, and while I do try to honor those feelings, there is not always time to sit and allow myself to tug that thread and see what it tells me. I can’t tell my bank, “I will get you next month, I just need to be sad this month, can I get a one-time pass on my mortgage?”. To be fair, I don’t think it would do me well to just sit and marinate in my grief either.

Taking the time to be intentional and to reflect and talk or write about my grief means I am not holding it back, letting it fester until it erupts. Instead, I am honoring my schedule, my responsibilities, and the time I have. I am reminded of a bit in hte Bible where Jesus said to let the dead bury the dead, and while I don’t believe it has anything to do with actually skipping out on the dead, on the other hand it does come to mind that my dad would want us to go on living and doing the things we want and need to do. I am not evading his memory or skipping out on the pain; I am just open to it at different times, and suspect that this will be an ongoing feeling and process for me the next year(s) of my life. I doubt it will ever truly go away, but it will just become less and less a forefront of my daily or weekly experience. Grief is weird like that. It is never gone; it just becomes more and more a part of us, and hopefully imbues us with more empathy for others and an understanding that on the runaway train, we don’t know who is where, but that we all deserve compassion.