The other day I was watching a show. In the show the father of one of the characters was dying of cancer. Now that is not an unfamiliar scenario for me, or for many people losing loved ones. It becomes more personal when the story is yours. It feels like the whole world should stop and weep with you, when the story includes your father, mother, brother , son or daughter. I remember wondering how the rest of the world could just go on, when my heart was broken when the hole was so deep, it felt like there was nothing that could ever make the world right, right enough to go on. What would it look like to not hear his laughter, or have the deep conversations about anthropology, psychology, fishing, music, chain mail………etc. How would it look to know that he would never again walk through the door, when the pictures on the wall would change with time, marriages, birth, graduations……….? How could those pictures change if his never would? What would I do when there were questions bigger than anything that I understood and I needed someone who I know wasn't afraid to hear the sadness, the brokenness, the anger or whatever unsavory feelings came out of the pain of life? He wouldn't be there. He, my dad, didn't have to say anything about how he felt about me. I always knew that he adored me, that he thought I was special and that he wished he could make all the growing things, all the sadness go away, but not now………. Him leaving left a big hole. He held my belonging in a world that was fraught with confusion and difficulty to navigate That is what Dads are for. And sons, they bring a sense of protection as we grow old and they grow strong, but now they are both gone.
When the son of the father who had just died in my movie was grieving with a friend he says I don't know how to live in world without my dad. I sat there and suddenly started to cry and I knew that I didn't know that either. It suddenly left me knowing that all the time of being brave, putting the loss in "perspective" just wouldn't do anymore. It wasn't my head that didn't know it was my heart. He held a piece that no one in the world did. So did my son. We laughed together, cried together, studied together, created together and dissected many of the important things of life and love. It doesn't just go away. There is a time that we talk, hoping that we will feel better, but then the time passes that it seems "appropriate" to be still grieving, that is when is actually starts to get hard. At first you can convince yourself that he is gone somewhere, will be home later, even though every part of you is aching and knowing that it is not true, there is a kind of shock that doesn't pass for a while. The hardest part was that there was a way that I felt like I could never really talk about what happened. That I couldn't talk about him, people were uncomfortable, they don't know what to do with the ever present elephant in the room, death, sadness, regret, fear. They want to fix it, say the right thing that will make you feel better. But the reality is nothing makes you feel better. No one can you give you a silver bullet to leaving grief behind. Grieving so that others will feel comfortable, prolongs the inevitable. People always want other people who are grieving to be strong, it is a cultural expectation borne of lack of understanding, and discomfort with the emotion . I never wondered what that meant, being strong, until my son died, and then I knew that it meant suppress the inconsolability of the loss to avoid discomfort . I know that I am generalizing, and there are people and places that understand grief, but its not taught really well and it isn't understood very well.. Our comfort level is ok at first and and then we just don't know what to do with it.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what people expect or offer during, before and after, it is about what you expect of yourself, what you allow of yourself. Personally, I didn't grieve very well, right after my son passed away from leukemia, my Dad's cancer ran out of control and I felt the responsibility to be there, help and support and my story, had to be packed away for another day, another time. After Dad died,and I had had the chance, during his illness to walk the same hospital halls, talk with some of the same doctors and nurses, watch the same pain and suffering that I had so recently seen, I stopped being able to process any of it. I cried briefly and felt the hole of not wanting him to be gone, but quickly packed it with the other story and put it away. There was too much there. I got sick. My grief just made me sick. I curled up on the couch and couldn't open the door to anything for about two years. I went throughout he motions of doing things, pretended that I was all right and had landed this thing with great grace beauty, strength and perspective, but I hadn't. I couldn't look at it. I couldn't express anything that came near the real thing, I built strong walls and kept everything out. One day, they started to crumble. There were a number of things that caused cracks, mostly relating to my other kids. Then there was a straw and it broke the camel's back and it all came pouring out, it was directed at nothing and everything, no one and everyone. I had no idea what was happening. There was no consciousness about the experience, it was just pure raw emotion, totally unfiltered. People thought many things, many just went away, they didn't know what was wrong either, after all, the "time" had passed, I should be fine. In fact most people went away, not sure I blame them,but some stayed and waited while I raged and cried and tried to make sense of why a child should die, how to talk when no one is listening. There was a point where it started making more sense. The day I finally said " Why wasn't I there at that appointment, maybe if I just had of been there, maybe I could have made this happen differently. Why did his death have to look like that? We didn't even get to say good-bye. Why didn't they tell us when they knew they could do nothing? Why did they just kill him faster? Things that are totally irrational and they make no sense except for when you are grieving , somehow there is this ridiculous lack of common sense in any of the questions or lack of it in any of the answers. Today three years later I miss my Dad. I have pushed my family away because I don't know how to be in it without him. IT has nothing to do with them, it is just I don't know how to live in a world without him, maybe they remind me of that. I don't know, there are still some things that don't make sense with grief, but the only way through it is to take one step at a time. I wish he was here to say Happy FAther's Day to. I wish we could talk about my garden, his fishing, all the herbs he is taking, what I am learning. I wish he was here because I miss him. I miss watching my son become a father, make his own life, and be there as I grow old, someone to lean on. Each day there is a little more light and I find that I can see parts of myself that I had lost. For today I miss my dad. So I hope that he knows wherever he is that I miss him and am glad that he is my dad.
