Walter

Originally, I had planned to post a story on my dad’s birthday, but now that my own is coming up, it seems somewhat more fitting. Each year for a couple of days leading up to my birthday, my narrative tends to shift from “my dad died” back to “I lost my dad”. I still feel a little guilty for wanting to celebrate my birthday because what is there to celebrate really? A day I only get to have because of my mom and dad. But with my dad missing, it seems incomplete and therefore not right. I feel fortunate and grateful to enjoy who and what I still have on that day but at the same time undeserving of any happy celebration. At 3.13pm on May 16th, 2014, my life took a turn for the worse. Actually, already a week before. However, how my dad died and everything that happened around it is a story in itself and one for another time. As inappropriate as it may sound, I’m thankful that it happened at that specific point in my life. Of course I didn’t always see it this way. In fact, it took me more than two years to see and really appreciate the good in his death and everything else that came from it. I wish Grief Narratives existed back then to have given me comfort and solace when I needed it the most, because I felt alone in my grief.

I grew up as an only child. My mom and dad had been separated for almost twenty years and I’d had barely any contact with my dad’s side of the family. Although I’ve been close with my mother’s side of the family, they couldn’t support me emotionally. We rarely talked about it, and merely mentioned facts when we did. They did not, however, pity me, and instead treated me as if nothing had changed. They showed me how to continue to live life as we did before. For that kind of support I was grateful. My boyfriend back then and I broke up mutually on the day of my father’s funeral, so he was no good in being my rock either. While my closest circle of friends knew about my dad’s death, they didn’t know how to react to the situation. Nor did I expect them to, because how could they when they had not experienced it as adults themselves. Even though they were supportive and always there for me whenever I would need them, they were tiptoeing around me and being very careful as to not say anything that had a connotation to death. It wasn’t until I used such expressions again that they felt comfortable using them again too. It was at that time, when it seemed that everything went back to normal and the world had forgotten about my father’s death, that grief hit me like a ton of bricks. Up until that point, my mind and my body had been in a trance-like state. I felt okay but sometimes I wouldn’t eat but one banana and some strawberries a day. My body reflected what my unconscious already knew. Although I was familiar with the five stages of loss and grief, I wasn’t prepared for what was to come. I had met death many times before, but what I like to refer to as his demons were new to me. It felt like as if they were scavengers on the hunt for my sadness, ready to suck the life and the happiness out of me and live off of my misery. It was always the worst at night when everything was quiet and my thoughts weren’t distracted anymore. I cried myself to sleep at night more times than I can count. The light was switched on in my room but I felt like I was in a tunnel without any light to guide me. There was no end. I just knew I had to keep going. I wished for someone who could understand what I was going through emotionally who had the words for it and could comfort me by telling me that everything was gonna be okay. I felt alone. It wasn’t because I was alone; I had (and still have) a great support system of family and friends. But I was alone in my grief. I didn’t want to call my friends because it wasn’t their burden to bear. Sometimes I would tell them how I felt, but not at full depth and never when I would be in that dark place. For a second, I thought about seeing a therapist, but knowing that I needed someone at night and not during the day when I was studying or working in sales and my brain was occupied, it became clear pretty quickly that I had to face my demons myself.

Meeting up with my demons became a routine, and over time, I wouldn’t fear them anymore and would just give in to them. My tunnel seemed to sink deeper each day. One night when I felt particularly hopeless, I began to weigh my options: first, continue as is, second, end my suffering by trying to work through it, third, end my suffering by ending my life. As a generally cheerful human being, I was taken aback by the sheer thought that just crossed my mind. I always weigh all my options to make an informed decision, yet that right there shocked me more than anything else ever has in my life. How could I think even for a tenth of a second that that was any option?! I immediately snapped out of my portion of sorrow for that night because I knew that the first and third weren’t any real options. I made the decision to lead me out of the tunnel myself instead of waiting for something or someone that wasn’t gonna come. And I said it out loud as a promise to myself. I realized that grief needed to be felt in order to move forward. So that’s what I did. I would sit on my bed and consciously put myself through every little awful detail that led to my father’s death and what came after. It was like bursting into a million pieces and trying to glue them back together until the next blow came and I burst again. Over time, I became better at gluing until one day, I learned that all my tears and heartache were love for the person who was no longer around. This was when I didn’t burst anymore. I began to feel gratitude instead of sorrow. The waves of grief would slowly begin to hit me less hard and fewer so. This is not to say that grief ever faded completely, but nowadays, the waves are few and far between. It’s on days like my birthday or Christmas that I still reminisce and get sad. Whenever I do, I allow myself to feel my emotions, because it shows how much I’ve loved him. After I lost my dad, I decided to treat myself with at least one thing on my birthday each year without feeling guilty until I don’t feel guilty at all anymore. This year, it’s gonna be a dish I came across during my travels a year ago: crab cakes. I wish I knew of its existence sooner so that I could’ve made and shared this delicious food with my pops. I’m sure he would have loved it too.