The Beacon of Light in Grieving my Father

I found myself at the Vancouver airport early in the morning on June 15, 2017. As I hustled through security, waited at the boarding gate, and tried to sleep on the flight, I kept my sunglasses on to hide my tears. I made it back to my apartment in Calgary by noon. It was messy and cluttered with half-packed moving boxes, and standing in the middle of the chaos, a new wave of emotions washed over me, causing overwhelm on top of the heavy grief my heart felt. My father had passed away the night before from cancer and I had been in Vancouver to spend time with him and be with my family in his very last days. Now, I was here, by myself, my life feeling like it was all out of sorts.   

The timing was not great; it hadn’t even been 24 hours since my father had officially been pronounced no longer alive, and I had already left my family behind so I could finish packing my things and move to Edmonton for a new job that started in a few days. Onward to a new job in a new city that was fairly unfamiliar to me – I had done this ordeal before. But this was the first time I was packing, moving, and starting fresh without my father’s help or without him being just a phone call away when I eventually ran into a minor hiccup. I wasn’t ready to do this endeavour without him; I wasn’t ready to embrace that the rest of my life was going to unfold and continue without him there. To make matters worse, I didn’t even have my family to console me in person; they were an entire province away. I was about to start the next chapter of my life in an unfamiliar place, and I had never felt so alone.

In his 2017 article titled Researching Grief: Cultural, Relational, and Individual Possibilities, Paul Rosenblatt discusses how “family members are not good at providing grief support for one another”, going on to explain the limited capacity a family might have to support one another after losing a loved one. In just a few weeks after my father had passed, it was evident that my mother and I had different ways of processing our grief and emotions. She seemed less sentimental and more focused on next steps, and I wondered if maybe it was because she had spent so much time in the hospital with my father and therefore felt more prepared for this new reality than I was. The only other family my father and I shared aside from my mom were my half-brother and half-sister, neither of whom I had a close enough relationship to find comfort in. While feeling excruciatingly separated from my family, I found myself in a position where it felt necessary to make good impressions with my new colleagues and potential new friends, while also enjoying the beginning of summer in Alberta. I did my best to suppress any signs that I was sad and have the best time possible as I found myself in the presence of so many people who had never met my dad. The grief felt increasingly substantial for me in almost every moment, but simultaneously didn’t seem applicable in my everyday life. So often, I felt as though I had no other choice but to brave the world and live my life as though everything was fine, waiting until I returned to my apartment alone to grieve.

My strategy of grieving aligned with a theory of bereavement coping methods known as the dual process model. Proposed by psychologists Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, the model explains that the way an individual experiences or copes with their grief can ebb and flow between loss-oriented stressors and restoration-oriented stressors; loss-oriented stressors focus on the pain and anguish, while restoration-oriented stressors act as a distraction from the grief and inspiration to restore normality in one’s life despite the loss of a loved one. According to Stroebe and Schut, the restoration-oriented experience is necessary to ensuring people are productively taking care of themselves as life goes on, and that oscillating between the two can help an individual confront the reality of life without their loved one there anymore.

This dual process model is the primary component engaged in designing Good Grief, a program that aims to provide support and coping mechanisms for grieving young people who lost a family member to cancer. Within this program, people move between different activities aligned with the bereavement coping model that also focus on other frameworks including constructivism, self-compassion, and continuing bonds. One of the activities is the Life Imprint session, which is an exercise that encourages grieving participants to learn and remember facets of their loved one through letters written by other family members or friends. Along with reading about their loved one, participants engage in a group session where they reflect on their loss, the connection they shared with their loved one, and recognize opportunities to maintain that connection moving forward. A 2019 evaluation of Life Imprint reported that young people who participated in Good Grief found the program enjoyable and meaningful. Participant testimonials included individuals who said they felt reassured in the relationship they had had with the person who passed away and felt confident in being able to honour their loved one’s legacy while also moving on with their own life.

It was August when we finally decided to host my father’s Celebration of Life. Not knowing who exactly to invite, my mother and I invited everyone we could think of, including my father’s old friends and colleagues from before I was even born and a lot of people who had been my friends throughout grade school. Unexpectedly, many people replied that they would be there, eager to share their condolences in person and their own memories of my father’s kind, friendly, and sometimes oddly funny demeanour. In a small recreational room, catered with small finger sandwiches and sugary cupcakes, all sorts of people young and old exchanged both tales as old as time about a man I’ve never known and classic recollections of the father I had grown up admiring. A man introduced himself as the best man of my parent’s wedding and shared his fondest memories of my father from way back before I was born. Former classmates of mine from elementary school took the time to express how instrumental my father was in helping them learn and understand English, finish their homework, or even just feel valuable and seen as young students when he volunteered as a teacher’s aide in the 90’s. With other lifelong friends and cousins, I reminisced about my father’s seemingly strict parenting styles or his preference for encouraging us to use our imagination for playtime instead of watching TV all day. The entire event was an afternoon spent connecting with friends, family members, former neighbours, and strangers who had loved, valued, and respected my father for so many reasons. They had freed up time in their schedule to attend this event, to honour my father, and to share all the ways he was special. Most importantly, they went out of their way to remind me of all the ways I was an extension of who he was, because of the way I looked, behaved, and moved through the world.

On that day, for the first time since my father had passed away, I finally felt like I could comprehend the heaviness of my loss and the grief with it; the excruciating heartache I had been experiencing felt validated. Up until this point, I had spent so much of my time with people who weren’t able to speak to how significant my loss felt because they didn’t know my father, and I had really started to question the validity of my grief. Learning more, sharing stories, and reflecting on who my father was, instilled confidence in knowing that the loss I felt was big and hard. I also felt reassured that I was not the only one who felt the grand impact of my father’s passing.

Published in the New York Times, a letter titled “My Father Died Young, His Sisters Kept Me from Losing Him Entirely” by Kristen Martin talks about how her aunts have reinforced the existence of Martin’s father through their own stories of him. Martin writes, “One of the hardest parts of my grief has been never getting to have an adult relationship with my parents, that the memories I have of them are finite. But by teaching me new things about him — even silly things like his obsession, toward the end, with fried ham sandwiches — my father’s sisters can open doors to rooms I didn’t know existed. They keep him alive for me.”

I relate to Martin’s experience of qualifying the existence of her parent(s). I was fortunate to have built a relationship with my father up until I was 30 years old, but my experience with him feels limited. There was so much I didn’t know and wanted to learn about him. I’m sure there were stories that we didn’t get a chance to share or bond over. My entire adult life awaits, and I no longer have the patient guidance and advice I had lovingly relied on my father for. In so many moments, I’ve found myself stuck between feeling as though I couldn’t possibly live my life without him and wondering how I could possibly move forward without being afraid of leaving him behind. My biggest fear, even now, continues to be that I and everyone will keep moving on with life and unintentionally forget how my father had somehow influenced the journey to wherever we end up.

It has been six years since my father passed away. I am still living in Edmonton with a circle of friends who never had the pleasure of meeting my father. Often, I continue to grieve alone in my apartment, surrounded by physical reminders of my father including his favourite shirts, a pair of his glasses, his books, and a giant portrait of him hanging in my hallway. On some days, as life propels forward in a myriad of ways, I wonder if I’m the only who is thinking of my father and what life would be like if he was still alive. As I grow and my live evolves, I regularly wish that he could still be a part of it all and catch myself ready to call him, only to remember he won’t be there to pick up the phone and cheer me on.

Writing this has been a reminder that he is a part of my life, still. Validated by my own friends and family, as well as other people who considered my father to be their friend and chosen family, I am a valuable extension of so many of my father’s great qualities; I am kind, unpretentious, and a great writer because my father showed and encouraged me to be so. I also know that I am not the only person who was positively impacted by my father’s personality and behaviours, because I’ve shared sentimental memories and the incredible impression my father had with so many other people.

In what I imagined would be the darkest time of my life, I found a beacon of light through other people; most importantly, my father. Through him, both because he passed away and because of who he was, I connected to a community of people who miss him too and who will help me in keeping his spirit alive. While the grief continues to weave through moments of my life, even very recently, it no longer feels impossible. I may have lost someone I couldn’t imagine my life without, but one day with a group of people reminded that I am not alone in acknowledging his absence and I no longer feel on my own as I navigate the world without him physically here.

Panic.

In an effort not to panic about Covid-19 and social distancing, I panicked.

And while I didn’t overstock on toilet paper (although, as someone who admittedly goes through a lot of toilet paper, I was tempted), I made sure my fridge, freezer, and pantry were fully stocked just in case I wouldn’t be able to get back to the grocery store anytime soon. Which, in theory, doesn’t seem like a bad idea…

Unless you have a history with an eating disorder.

photo credit: Jeff Woodward

Even though I’m the type of person who would rather stay home in sweatpants than stress over getting my makeup just right and putting on tight jeans, I still like having the option of leaving my home and spending my time elsewhere if I want to. Sometimes I like working from bar tops while I people watch or in the airport lounge before a flight or even in the office just because I need human interaction with cool people. And sometimes, I just want to get out of the house and wander the aisles at the bookstore, or my favourite clothing store, or catch up with friends over a cocktail.

But there’s a difference between choosing to stay home and being forced into the confinements of your home.

Before, I was busy enough with work that I’d eat while also simultaneously responding to emails or only be able to step away from my computer long enough to put together a meal before feeling the pull back to my inbox. Before, there was motivation to get work done immediately so I didn’t have to work a second longer than my 8 hour commitment, and I could rush off to run errands or meet up with friends for drinks and possibly a better dinner than I could ever cook myself. Life wasn’t this repetitive routine of waking up and wondering if I should choose the couch, the kitchen counter, or even the bed as my workspace that day. There was a greater sense of purpose, a sense of urgency, distractions.

But now? There’s nothing but space for a eating disorder to flourish.

photo credit: Jeff Woodward

The worst and best place for an eating disorder is isolation.

It’s when I’m all alone that my eating disorder finds it’s strength, because there’s no judgement from anyone else to put a stop to it’s ravenous destruction in times of discomfort. No one’s going to see me shoveling an entire bag of chips, followed by half a bag of jelly beans and a bowl of ice cream into my mouth with an uncertain and slightly concerned “ummm… maybe that’s enough?” look. I only have to face my own shame when I immediately feel bloated and ill afterwards, which is easily fixed by sleeping it off and pretending that what just happened, didn’t. And when I get so desperate that I want to purge it from my system, no one has to witness it – and well, that means that it pretty much didn’t even happen.

All the times my eating disorder has peaked, it’s been when I was all alone with nowhere to turn for comfort, except my kitchen. I was living in cities where I had no close friends or family and the only thing that brought me a moment of familiar joy in moments of stress was eating the things I loved. Everything, from handfuls of sugared gummy candies, to handfuls of ripple chips, to multiple servings of my favourite meals – even though I was already close to full. And right now – even though I do live in a city with close friends, chosen family, and my partner – it’s not much different. We’re not allowed to be close to the people who bring real happiness to our hearts, and my partner’s been sent out of town for work most of the week. All the while, the world seems to be falling apart and we’re losing our sense of freedom and our jobs and we’re worried about what the future holds, and there’s really nowhere to go to release that stress, except to walk around the block for the umpteenth time while waiting two more weeks for an opening in my therapist’s schedule.

And so, I head to the kitchen.

Food has been a source of comfort for me since I was a kid.

Almost every day when my mom would arrive home from work, I’d run down the stairs to greet her knowing she’d likely have a ‘treat’ of some sort to offer me that she’d picked up on the way. When I visited homes of extended families, it meant that there’d be available junk food that we didn’t keep in our own home or eating out at restaurants we normally wouldn’t go to. My ‘Lola’ – my sweet Filipino grandmother – was famous for serving up rich, traditional soul food and the occasions where our massive extended family would gather around were something to look forward to. Plus, there were always guaranteed leftovers to take home and enjoy when the celebrations were over.

I associated eating with good experiences, mostly. And now when life feels hard, I default to food to bring back those distant moments of innocent happiness; to being a kid again who looked forward to another bowl of Froot Loops and only really worried about “what are we going to have for lunch / snack / dinner today?“.

I’m no longer a kid, but I still find solace in eating food that tastes good, when everything else doesn’t feel good. And nothing feels good right now, so I’m eating… more than usual.

And that’s just the beginning of my problems.

What’s a girl, who didn’t love her body for a majority of her life and did everything possible – from waist shrinking corsets to spending 8 hours a day just sucking in her stomach to crash diets to juice diets to working-out twice a day to restrictive diets to bingeing and purging for years – just to love herself even a little bit, supposed to do when life feels unusual and stressful and the rest of the world (and the voice inside her head) is still screaming “but you can’t let this take you down! you’ve got to survive, thrive, and come out untouched!”??

I don’t know the actual answer to that question, but I can tell you what I have done.

PANIC.

photo credit: Jeff Woodward

It wasn’t that long ago that I actually started to enjoy food again. It didn’t scare me as much; I didn’t worry excessively about what would happen if I ate a little more of something delicious because… well that’s what you should do when something is fucking delicious. I looked forward to going out for dinners, I even started teaching myself to cook new recipes. Actually, my favourite part about getting drunk was the fact that I would likely find a way to devour an excessive amount of salty carbohydrates (possibly covered or paired with cheese) in the process! I barely recognized myself, but I liked it. Life was so much easier not hating myself for indulging every once in awhile and eating food for goodness – and not just because it was good for me in terms of fueling my body and keeping me alive.

And then, the pandemic exploded. All of the sudden, the gyms are closed and I can no longer take 2 hours of my morning to myself to drown all my stresses (food related or not) in sweat and the good feels that come with tough challenges and body movements. On top of that, I really have nowhere to go and I’m moving less. I sleep in. I stay up longer and sit on the couch and binge-watch TV shows or binge-read books. I take naps, even though I slept in.

I’m burning less energy, and yet – I’m putting more calories into my mouth out of boredom, because of stress, for no other reason than it tastes good and it brings me joy in a time when anything remotely exciting feels out of reach.

And that frightens me.

Because, while I’m not the greatest at math, I do know that if you put more calories into your mouth than you’re burning off throughout the day, those calories stick to your body and are interpreted by a few extra pounds on the scale and a tighter fit inside the clasps of your bra, your jeans, your favourite t-shirts. When I indulge in more sugar, more fat, more simple carbohydrates – my face, my stomach, my thighs, my butt – they all expand. And despite them only expanding ever so slightly in a small amount of time, that little monster inside my brain digs out it’s little magnifying glass and convinces me that all those body parts have expanded in monumental amounts from the extra bits of goodness I’ve shoved into my mouth.

“Jen. How did you let this happen?!” – the monster inside my head, and then me to myself after staring and dissecting myself in the mirror.

Food has become scary again. Despite it being a necessary ingredient to my survival, food is my enemy. I am afraid to eat it, to satiate my hunger and give my body energy to function. I am afraid to enjoy it, to allow myself to find delight and comfort within it.

I need to eat, but I don’t want to out of fear. And my home is overloaded with food because of a pandemic, and I cannot escape it. The two experiences cause me stress, and food is one of the ways I cope with my stress.

Do you follow the unbearable cycle?

I wish this story had some uplifting, happy ending that would maybe inspire you. It’s still in progress, and I don’t yet have the ability to predict the future. Who knows, it might not end well!

What I can tell you is that not every day is a nightmare of me staring at myself in the mirror with sad eyes. Also, I don’t fight myself every day on eating chips for a meal or having ice cream for dessert. But there a lot more days than there used to be of worrying about those kinds of things, and it’s incredibly annoying. It makes me sad, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed – especially with everything else going on.

To relapse after finding safety and freedom, to fall prey to demons that dwell from the darkest corners of my soul in a time of vulnerability and anxiety, to feel like I’m being pulled backwards when I’ve worked so hard to move myself away from the worst moments of my eating disorder is depressing. It sucks and even trying to just find a way to stay on top of it still preemptively exhausting.

The only really slightly solid piece of comfort I find in it all (aside from the taste of my favourite foods) – is that I am not the only one. We’re all feeling burdened in this unexpected turn of events where we’ve lost the ability to throw ourselves into the multiple experiences that can distract us from our deepest fears. For some, those fears include gaining weight or losing muscle. For others, it’s having to indefinitely give up the career they’re so passionate it about or relinquish their position, and possibly their role as a bread-winning caregiver for themselves, their household, their entire extended family even. Parents aren’t just parents anymore; they’re daycare, elementary, and high school teachers too – while possibly still trying to get their own actual work done as well.

So many of us were on our ways to living our best, fulfilled lives – and now, we’re stuck just trying to keep our heads above water and soften the rumblings of the fears we’d been suffocating for so long, as they find their way to the surface where we’re trying to stay afloat. And maybe one of the worst parts: we don’t have an end date. We’re already growing tired, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

So… what the fuck do we do now?

Some days are better than others. On the good days, I float on without a thought of pulling open the snack drawer. Or, I open it without guilt to satisfy whatever the craving of that moment is. Sometimes those manageable days are followed by harder ones, where I hesitate to reach into the cookie jar one. more. time (again) to find the slightest bit of joy amidst my suffering. That’s the way… well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, so they say. Good days, bad days — they all happen completely out of our control. And on some of those days, both good or bad, all I want is a damn chocolate chip cookie. *because, hello. there’s really no substitute for the sweet, familiar childhood flavour of a chocolate chip cookie!

In times like this, it’s one day at a time, one foot in front of the other – even if they’re just baby steps.

The process of navigating life through a pandemic is hard enough without extra shame or self-punishment, so I’m trying really fucking hard not to incorporate those into the mix and practice being real with myself.

It’s okay for me to eat. Actually, I have to eat to survive, especially now as I navigate unprecedented times without my familiar distractions, while my worst demons are creeping out from the shadows. Life’s changed, which can only mean other changes are bound to happen – and maybe that means I eat a little more, move a little less, and my body changes.

But the one thing those changes don’t affect are who I am or my value. 

Food is not the enemy. My body is not my enemy.

I am my own worst enemy.
We are our own worst enemies.

This world is not trying to ruin you or me; it’s those villains somewhere in our brains telling us that we’re just not enough as we simply try to find our way through an immediately new, completely unexpected ‘normal’. As everything changes and feels way out of our control, the first instinct is to panic and send ourselves into a spiral of absolute self-destruction.

This is me telling myself (and you): Don’t do that. It’s not a good idea.

But, even I know that that’s way easier said, than done.

Hard.

I never imagined that it would be this hard.

It, in this case, being writing while simultaneously grieving and trying to move forward after the loss of my father. I have sat here, staring at this blinking cursor on the computer screen for months. A few words into my thoughts, and my attention would wander to memories of Dad.

His presence these days is suffocating.

And if I’m being honest, I sometimes get tired of talking about it him. I feel guilty saying that, since there aren’t that many things in this life I wouldn’t suddenly trade in if it meant bringing him back to real life. But the grief is heavy and tiresome and it just won’t go away. I know why; I get it.

But I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to deal with it.

And it’s just so hard.

Mr. T – he’s everywhere I am.

Some of this is my very own fault. I’ve purposely given him space to hang out and be present all around me. His identifiable plaid shirts hang nicely (to Dad’s standards) in frames along my bedroom wall, saddled with the last two chap-sticks he’d used until his very last days. In my living room, an iconic portrait of him hangs on the wall.

A few books from his personal collection are nestled in the rows of romantic fairy tales, female memoirs and self-help books of my own that Dad would have likely never been interested in. My couch, that just so happens to be perfectly designed for movie nights and cozy naps, was a gift from Dear ol’ Dad; he insisted on buying it for me, which saved me from the cheaply built and likely uncomfortable futon I almost bought from Walmart.

When the “check engine!” light glows upon my dashboard, Dad is the first person I think to call. The same thing for when my oil light beams, but I know he’d likely give me shit – since he once (or several times) tried to teach me the importance of diligently checking my oil and I never listened, and then blew up my engine.
OOPS.

My favourite pair of cold weather boots: Dad bought ’em, when we were in Scotland and I had arrived ill-prepared for the frigid temperatures. That was the only vacation that Dad and I ever took together, just the two of us. And when someone recently reminded me it was tax season, I fell apart at the thought of actually hiring someone to do my taxes for me or the horror of having to do them myself. Dad always took the lead on that one and did them for the whole family.

Then every single time I sit down to write on this laptop: my Dad. He was generous enough to buy me this MacBook, and the two I owned before it.

Welp. It’s no wonder I’m having a hard time getting any writing done.

I’m having a really difficult time embracing the reality of living life without a father.

Sometimes I forget about it, and then I remember. I remember his cold, limp hand in mine as I tried desperately to refrain from blinking in hopes that I wouldn’t miss the moment when he might take one last breath, until my family kindly pulled me out of the hospital room on that final day.

So it’s not that I have nothing to write these days, but it’s seemingly tougher to do with grief latching tightly to me. My thoughts, some of them not even not directly related to my father, keep me up at night. They take up space for much too long, dispersing weight, stress, tension through every channel and area of my body. Eventually, I’m just sort of lost for words and feeling defeated by the heartache that’s engulfed my body. Because I’m human and naturally care what other people think of me to some extent, I’ve put my best face forward as often as possible, to fit in and make good impressions with fairly new faces and “move on” – because, that’s what I’m *supposed* to do, right? (Wrong)

The truth is that I’m just half-decent at pretending that I’m okay and that I’ve sort of got it all figured out; that there’s more good days than bad. It’s been about 8 months since my Dad passed away though and some of my biggest wins are days when I manage to get myself back in bed at the end of the day without tears rolling down my cheeks just thinking about the fact that he’s gone.

Most days, he’s all I think about. At any given moment, I suddenly remember that I can’t email him, hear his voice, see his face in real life or even try to text him on his old T9 texting flip phone – and it’s over.

The grief rushes over me and I’m stuck.

I’ve been paralyzed since the moment I found out my father slipped away. Which is sort of ironic really, since I actually haven’t stopped moving or taken a hot minute to really, truly grieve since I found out he died.

For real.

It was the early evening on Wednesday in June when Mr. T passed away. Before the sun had even started to rise the next morning, I was already standing in the security lineup at the airport waiting to fly back to the city I called “home”, where I needed to finish packing my apartment. By Saturday morning, I had gone out for lunch, dinner and drinks on different occasions with different friends and was all moved into a new apartment in a different city by the Saturday evening. I was back at the airport Monday morning for training and officially started my new job the following Monday. By that point, it had been almost two weeks since Dad had passed. The whole experience was so fresh that it still didn’t feel real, and maybe that made it easy for me to just put my head down and push forward with trying to settle into new digs, new friendships, new relationships, and the every day hustle and grind of life as per usual.

This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced a death of someone close to me. I’ve unfortunately lost both my grandmothers, an uncle, a great-aunt and a few family friends. But, even though I’m aware of the truth that eventually we all die, and that there are occasional circumstance where sometimes the people we love leave this earth sooner than we expected them too, I just let the ugly truth of my father dying one day just slip away and sort of hoped it might just miraculously never happen.

Because, let’s be real: we don’t ever want our heroes to die. My Dad was a HUGE part of my life; he raised me for all the memorable years of my life as a stay-at-home husband, always available father, chaperone for school field trips, someone to converse on the way to and from school, and maker of some mediocre but made-with-love lunches. He never failed to only give me sage advice when I mostly wanted easy answers, and always challenged me to become a better version of the person I thought I should be. No, he was never my best friend – but he believed in me and loved me tremendously in quiet but meaningful gestures.

So as I continue to pass through daily, monthly and yearly milestones without him, I find myself slowing down, pausing, and holding on so tight to the memories and times when I got to share those little moments with him – wishing that he could still be there now, because I’m clueless as to how to proceed alone. I stall indefinitely in those times, my heart clenching tighter around them, leaving no space for potentially new experiences to breathe into existence.

I’m just not ready.

CHANGE. It’s a subject I’ve talked about a lot on this dusty old blog. I’ve also mentioned before that although change is one of life’s few constants, it still remains to be a subject that many, including myself struggle with.

For me, this change is so significant and suffocating. I’m traumatized by grief, and it shows.

It’s sitting in those bags under my eyes and it’s the reason I complain about how tired I feel all.the.time. It’s the main event of the nightmares in my broken sleep at night, and the vivid dreams that continue to cling to me long after I’ve crawled out of bed and ventured into my day. It’s the root of aching pain in my back, carried into my shoulders and pinning them to my ears. It’s the seized up muscles in my neck causing debilitating headaches and the stress that’s encouraged me to clench and grind my teeth.

Almost 8 months since my heart was completely shattered, and there’s a ripple effect surging throughout my body still.

I have been frantically trying to holding the seams of myself together, putting band-aids on gaping wounds. I’ve foolishly tried to pretend that death is “no big deal”, because it’s an inevitable element of life and something we just have to embrace and move forward from. I’ve tried to conceal my sadness with fake smiles and false enthusiasm, good deeds and best friends, hard work, fun adventures, retail therapy, and any other distraction that deters me away from the harsh reality of having to figure out how to live my life without my Dad.

But quick fixes never work. Somewhere in the midst of silence and over-stimulation, I’ve unravelled and fallen apart from the inside, out.

As I write this, I’m trying to watch the words appear on the screen through a waterfall of tears. There is a hole in my heart, in my existence. And similiar to a deflating balloon, everything about life as I once knew it has sort of just diminished. Everything feels different and the littlest things in life just feel torturous.

Including pouring my heart into a blog post.

It took me approximately 3 months to put together the words in this piece. I struggled to make it through single sentences, tears streaming down my face in sadness and frustration.

I lost track of how many times I thought about deleting the whole thing; I didn’t want it to seem like I was throwing a pity party for myself. But as many people have continued to remind me, I’m not crying for attention. I’m crying, sulking, mourning and wondering what the fuck is happening – because that’s a most reasonable reaction to the reality I face, day in and day out, after such a major loss. Sure, it’s not the only reaction, but it’s one that makes total sense.

As much as I don’t want to believe he’s gone, I knew deep down that Mr. T would die eventually; he was an “old man with grey hair” ever since I’d been a little kid, so I had tried to somehow mentally prepare for this day. And even though I  tried to imagine the scenario in my head numerous times, I don’t think it helped. To be honest, I don’t know that I expected it to or that I knew what to expect. And moving forward, I still don’t know where to set my expectations.

But I don’t think that I’m supposed to understand it or know anything for sure about this – the raw reality of losing someone you love(d) more than anything else, grief, life without that person. I don’t think anyone does, because I don’t think there are concrete answers or solutions to this experience. It’s different for everyone, every single time.

It’s been 8 months and it still hurts the same – if not more – than it did when I got dragged out of that hospital room after Dad died. It might hurt that way for awhile.

I don’t really know.

I just know that it’s hard.