It’s been a long time since I have written in this blog. Part of that has been time and energy and part of that has been me desperately trying to gather the emotional and physical strength to write about my dad. It’s been just over 4 months since he passed away and I am just now able to sort through all the feelings involved in dealing with his death. His death was not sudden because he’d been battling sickness for years. BUT never in a million years did I think I would have a front row seat to watch his end of life journey. As a result of this intimate view of his demise, I found it almost impossible to separate his end of life from his life. I am not just starting to see past the trauma and remember the guy behind it. I started to write this blog in September but became overwhelmed with emotion and quit. Today, just a few days after my first birthday without him, I conjured the power of Gryffindor and put on his Warriors sweatshirt to start writing again.
I am at the point now where the immediate trauma was triaged and now there’s just a permanent pain in my gut when I think of him. So much has already happened that I would have told him or shared with him. Every time I watch a Warriors game, I think of him and miss him. Can’t believe they are good again and Steph broke the three-point record and he missed it! He would love the new young guys tearing it up. He would have celebrated right alongside me when my second favorite Warrior, Iggy came back. We had Thanksgiving without him. How he loved to go back for seconds and thirds and the house was always full of his West Coast family. This year we dreaded it. We did not know what to do. How could we have become a party of three? Luckily, we invited Christopher, our neighbor over to sit in his seat. It was quiet and lovely.
We celebrated Hanukkah without him and now my birthday has passed. We skipped the birthday dinner picture this year because it felt wrong. I am really starting to come into my own professionally and he will never know. I know he was proud of me in the end but he will never see my future success. That is the part that I can’t wrap my brain around. Jewish Christmas is around the corner and I feel unsure about how that will feel along with Jon’s birthday and the New Year. They say the firsts are the worst and it gets easier to deal with the feelings around the holidays. I hope that is true. I still can’t listen to a single song from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album but Tom Petty and Billy Joel have made it back into the mix. I also can’t listen to The Big Chill soundtrack yet. We played so much music for him in the end and I know that was a good thing but now those tracks act as triggers.
All I can say now is I am trying and I hurt less. I miss him though every day. I have a pic from the good ole days hanging on my wall and the memorial board is hanging in the dining room where his hospital bed once awkwardly sat. During this surreal time I really discovered who my true friends were. They are not always the people you expect. It’s a shitty club to be in the one where you’ve lost a parent but those folks who supported me and lifted me up when I was down will never be forgotten! I never used to pray. Always thought of myself as more spiritual and not religious. That’s changed now. I talk to him sometimes and it gives me solace. Besides my dad I lost a few friends as well in the last 2 years. I talk to them too sometimes. I Imagine a space where they are all hanging out and at peace. Before anyone reading this blog starts to worry about my sanity I will end it here for now. Just know that I will be ok and am still adjusting to what life looks like as a party of three and miss what life felt like as a party of four.
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| This is the photo that is hanging up in my room! |
