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.