On Grief

My dad in his element. The life of the party

To lose a parent is to lose a limb. One of the shocking passages of life. – Unknown

Grief isn’t linear. I still feel the sting of losing my dad, often at inopportune moments like when I’m at the grocery store and come across something he loved to eat. Or when watching a show he would’ve liked and I can hear his laugh. These moments sting my nose, my chest and throat tighten, and I have to avert my eyes out of fear that someone will catch the tears welling up.

You don’t experience grief the way they tell you-you’re going to. It isn’t a 7 step process where you graduate from one level to the other: denial becomes anger becomes depression etc. It is all of those emotions and none of them all at once. It lingers. It swells up like a wave and cuts off your air supply. Sometimes it dissipates as quickly as it arose and other times it clings to your skin like too much humidity in the middle of August: so heavy it weighs you down. Most days, I find myself numb and eager to be “busy”, trying to normalize.

It has been a year since he left and the clock has been spinning erratically ever since. Time can now move forward and backward.  The calendar has shifted, I have a new way of tracking the seasons, April 1st will from here on out be the marker of the “new year”.

It has been an interesting journey to grieve, and then begin to mourn, with the absence of religion. I have never been one for it, and throughout this process, I don’t find myself needing it, yet everyone speaks as though I should. Speaking to him is my new form of prayer. I meditate often and find calm in my yoga practice. Interestingly enough, I do, however, find myself needing routine and rituals, two things that, historically, I have been too “free-spirited” to commit to.

I have become very good at compartmentalizing. I don’t cry in front of my mom, yet I do cry often, in short, quick bursts. I can’t watch movies where fathers die, Guardians of Galaxy II left me sobbing quietly on the corner of the couch.

I worry about his legacy.

I dream of him often, we never speak, but each time he looks younger and younger.

April 1st marks the beginning of a new year and none of us are the same.