My dad died on Valentine’s Day from a cancer in his brain that he fought for a year and a half. I’ll talk about that more one day, but what I want to say now comes from the buildup and the fallout. What I want to say is not about the suffering and turmoil that I watched my dad and my family experience for that year and a half, or the milestones we hit every day that I never mentioned, like the last day he had ice cream or went outside. I want to talk about him and I will. But today, I want to talk about the aftermath. People don’t know what to say about death and dying. They tell you they’re sorry and they could never do what you’re doing, they tell you how strong you are and graceful you’re being, admire how you’re “back to work” or “still able to have fun”. Grievers are told time and time again, nobody knows what the right thing to say is. And we have grace. Giggle it off and nod our heads, tell them thank you and it’s okay. Because it is okay. They aren’t doing anything wrong t...
I think back to 10:15am on August 9th, standing at my work desk in my dress shoes and a coffee in front of me, catching my personal phone ringing and putting my headphones in. All I hear now is the crack of a match stick on a striker.
I knew the second I heard my sister’s breathing on the other end of the line.
Twelve hours later, I was standing in my childhood home. In the ashes of everything I knew. Everything and everyone that I loved. A life that I perfectly curated. A future I was on accurate trajectory to achieve. Everywhere I looked, there was devastation and destruction.
I asked my therapist if I’d ever recover. She said, “I don’t think so, but I think it becomes more normal than it is now.”
More normal, another thing that pinches in my stomach when I hear it. I don’t want this normal, I want the old normal.
Nothing will ever be the same. My eating habits, and making the bed in the morning. Going to the gym. My favourite songs. All my best friends. A job I used to dream about having. A city I used to dream about living in. A life I used to dream about being in. But it’s not just that.
Now it’s that, and I’m losing my dad, too.
Now it’s that, and my family is falling apart. And we have to sell the snowmobile, and the car he wanted to restore. And we don’t talk about Christmas presents. And there’s Chemo, radiation, bad news every time the phone rings. Now it’s that and we get the flu, and lose one of the family vehicles, and a tree falls on the house — and speaking of the house — we have to sell. And now it’s that look in everybody’s eyes, and that elephant in everybody’s room. It’s that and watching his chest rise & fall when he takes a nap. It’s getting not one, but two stomach ulcers in the meantime trying to cope.
It’s a grief I can’t even begin to understand, let alone explain. It’s a gravity I can’t escape, like I’m wearing concrete boots and a jacket full of sand. And I’m not even the one who has terminal cancer.
It’s the anticipation of the grief that’s worse. It’s the fall, knowing the pavement is climbing and I have nothing to reach out and hold. It’s grief for my family, and my family’s families, and my friends, and his friends, and his dentist and the girl at the front desk of the gym and the guy in the office a few doors down that he passes when he used to go in to work.
And retroactive grief, losing the life I had planned for myself, for us, for him. Calling him at work and hearing him tap along in Google learning about today’s news. Before cancer was something that could ever happen to us. Before we had to think about these things. And plead with time, and science, and miracles, and god. Getting married and buying a house one day, things you think they’d be there for.
Everywhere I look, I see ghost towns of what used to be. And I see visions of what’s to come.
What do I do with all this?
It was the first thing I said to my therapist once I was settled at home. How do I cope with all of these emotions?
She said “I hope if (god forbid) I end up in your dad’s shoes, that my child would come home to take care of me too.” And that was the first time I heard it, something good coming out of this burning mess.
I get time with my daddy. My favourite person in the world. If it weren’t for this, I wouldn’t have all this time. I wouldn’t be here to hug my mom and tell her everything’s gonna be okay and vice versa. I wouldn’t get to sing “The Boy Inside The Man” with my dad in the car on the way to his appointments every day. I wouldn’t have gotten our puppy, Sampson. I wouldn’t have got to hold my sisters engagement ring before she knew about it. And pick up her little baby from pre school.
And I still enjoy hockey games, from the comfort of my couch now, with my dad cheering beside me. And I still have best friends, we talk on FaceTime and I’ve reconnected with my childhood ones. And I still have love, more now than ever.
I still have grief, but I still have hope.
And before I forget to say it, moving home was the easiest decision I’d ever made. So easy, it didn’t even feel like there was an option.
So the question remains, what do I do with all this? I guess I don’t know. Bake it into a banana bread French toast for my daddy. Wrap it up with the Christmas presents under the tree. Sing to it in the car. Feel it in all these hugs. Sit with it, sleep with it, shower it off. Think about it and also try not to. Carry it but put it down when I need to rest. Share it with others. Let others share theirs with me. Try not to give myself a third stomach ulcer.
Try to make room for hope.
H. You’re so special. 💕
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