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On grief

This is something I wrote in early 2017 and lightly edited this week.


I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

How are things?

Good! Well, you know...not really. I mean pretty good, considering.

Those conversations I can handle, but my least favorite bits are the silences after a few minutes. Maybe I explained how mom was doing or how he died for the morbidly curious. The platitudes and the chit chat is done and there's just silence. I didn't know it at first, but I've slowly learned that this is where people feel something profound is supposed to go. Something the movies taught us has to happen, it's right there in the script. You're supposed to provide the neat bow on the tire fire that is your emotional state to assure all present that "everything happens for a reason" or "every cloud has a silver lining".


I hate that silence.

I wish I could say that I hope you never have to experience grief, but obviously that's impossible. Something tragic will happen to you and you will be sad at some point in your life. Now I could say that I hope your loved one is able to gently and painlessly drift away, surrounded by loved ones and sharing their best drinking story and deeply held feelings with you. That's improbable though.


My dad's death was an absolute shock that cut me to my core. It didn't break me though, and that's probably thanks to him. Grief is a weird, multifaceted thing. It's strange enough that we have one word to describe a process that is so often entirely different for two people. If I had to give advice, I'd say:


1) Feel your feelings.

The stages of grief aren't a real thing. Yes you'll probably experience a gamut of emotions, but there is no linear path. I've felt anger. Anger at every frumpy and bored looking father I saw while struggling to get home. Anger at the fact that this asshole yelling at his kids gets to be alive while mine is shuffled of to the morgue. It's not rational, but it's also not fair. My dad was great and this schmuck gets to drag his suitcase around the Dublin airport?

I've felt numb. Not in denial, but just able to wall off a part of me to get through the day. Those were the scariest times.


And I've felt sadness to a depth I didn't know existed. Cried more than my entire life put together. Ann had never seen me cry before and it was a running joke. Careful what you wish for!


2) Find someone to be honest with about those feelings.

Grief is lonely. Most people around you will know the rough outline of what happened, but not bring it up. A few close friends will offer "if you need anything..." type sentiments. You're not alone, but also you totally are if you let yourself. Find someone that you can tell everything to at a moment's notice and tell them how you want them to respond. I told Ann every time I cried just so she knew where I was at and how I really was. Otherwise you get stuck in the loop above. There's an elephant in the room and you don't want to bring it up cause it's a real bummer, so you leave a lot of things unspoken.

(PS -- From the 2018 me: If you need anything, I'd love to be that person for you. There's a weird shitty club of people you know that have lost parents. Sorry but membership is pretty much mandatory. We meet on Tuesdays. Carol brings snacks sometimes.)


3) Don't expect to wake up "better" one day.
You will one day and then slide right back the next. It's a weight that sits on you now. A concrete vest that's always there. One day it's so heavy and smothering you don't know how you can even manage to get out of bed. On better days it's a reminder that your dad's there and he loved you and you better not forget it or he'll give you something to cry about.

4) "What now?"

This step only comes later, when you've leveled off a bit, pulled your head out of the weeds, and asked the inevitable: "what now?" Now you start to live your life again. I don't want to be too pat here, but you really should go and listen to this podcast episode by Malcom Gladwell, which he closes by saying:
I took my father’s presence for granted for as long as he was alive and when he died, the first shocking realization was that I had to find a way to keep him alive in my heart, to honor his memory. How do we do that? Not by honoring our parents’ beliefs; we are different people than they are, born in different eras, shaped by different forces. What we are obliged to honor in our parents is their principles, the rules by which they lived their lives ...There is something impossibly beautiful about that act. In my grief, it has given me solace.
My father was an evangelical republican that spent the latter half of his career building coal plants. We did not see eye-to-eye on plenty. I will not be carrying on his specific beliefs, but I hope to carry on a lot more of his principles in the world. 

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