Losing Dad

My friend recently lost her mother and she asked me if it ever gets better. That got me thinking and here's what I learned when I lost Dad...

1: It doesn’t ever NOT hurt. The pain is always there; the loss is always there. Some days it just hurts less and the pain feels farther away. I equate it to a dam, day by day I work on building my dam. And weeks go by and months go by and the dam holds up! Then I hear a song or smell something and it springs a little leak. Sometimes I can fix the hole before the flood but other times I can’t. And then the dam breaks and it hurts like it was yesterday. Regardless of the strength of my dam, the hurt is always present.

2: When he died, life went on. I remember being so angry with people who were laughing and enjoying life. Did they not understand?! Could they not see? But it wasn’t their loss, it was mine. Bob Schneider has a song that says “It’s not the end of everything; it’s just the end of everything you know.” There is SO much truth in that simple little line. My world changed when I lost my dad but it didn’t end. I still had to get up and keep going.

3: I don’t remember much about that year. Everything is fuzzy. I have two lifetimes - Before Dad Died & After Dad Died. And I cried all the time and for no reason at all. And then some days I would be so busy I would forget and when I remembered, the tears came.

4: ALL milestones A.D.D. are bitter-sweet. Graduations, weddings, births – these are all things that he will miss. I have to leave the room during all Father-Daughter dances at weddings. It breaks my heart so I distract myself.

5: People don’t know what to say and I had to be forgiving. They panic and say the first thing they can think of which is usually something like “He’s in a better place” or “You’ll see him again some day!” NONE of these are comforting; they ALL made me want to shake people until their eyes crossed. My best friend came to my house the day after he died, sat on the back stairs with me, said “This SUCKS!” and then cried with me. That was perfect! That’s how I felt! It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right and it SUCKED. But I had to forgive people, they didn’t know any better. They thought they were being kind and supportive. They will also tell you how you should be grieving; people who have never experienced loss gave me books and recommended how I should be handling it. :) Bottom line, people do what they think is helpful.

We're a family that handles things with humor so we made each other laugh and then we cried.

Yesterday was his birthday, the dam has a few leaks. :) But tomorrow's new and maybe my heart will hurt a little less.

Until next time...