7 years without my dad
My dad died in 2019, 2 days after my 22nd birthday. He was my best friend. The only person on this planet who knew me inside and out, almost knew what I was thinking before I did, he and I had a pact that if he had to stay alive so did I. It was him and I against the world. Now 7 years of being without him, 7 years of memories, growth and moments that he was supposed to be here for and I still feel so alone.
I'm a mom now, my son is 4 and half and about to start Pre-K, I'm engaged, just bought my first car at 29 after years of driving anxiety, I'm the assistant manager at a restaurant that I love and he would've loved too. I have a whole life now that will never know him. My fiancé and son only know stories of my dad, memories I share with them, they don't recognize that all the beautiful parts about me that they love and admire are inherited from him. I know someone would try to make me see the good in my grief and would say that's how he lives on and how they meet him now. But that rings hollow still. Even 7 years later and those empty things you hear from others about your grief still make me angry. No he's not in a better place, no he's not still here and just because I carry his memory with me doesn't make the grief easier to bear.
I carry my grief alone because no one in my life who knew him mourns him as I do, everyone experiences the grief of losing my dad differently - that's just how grief works, it's different for everyone. But I think I feel it so much stronger because towards the end of his life everyone left me and him on our own. My dads addiction became too much for them, his difference in personality after 9 brain surgeries and 3 different brain aneurisms and stroking out in the operating room was too much for them. So they left me, from my teenage years until he died to take care of him and support him on my own. For the first few years they were there sometimes but once it got messy, once dad started asking for money instead of giving them money, when his addiction and depression became a burden to them, too hard for them to see, they left. They tried to tell me to let him hit rock bottom, to let him go through withdrawls, to not let him live with me, they wanted me to let him fall. I come from a family of addicts, both of my parents were cokeheads and I'm very aware that enabling an addict usually keeps them addicted, but that was my dad, the only person who stood by my side through everything that happened in our lives. The only person who ever took time to truly understand me and there was the flip side that because of the stroke and nerve damage my dad needed pain meds to get through the day without them even before it turned into an addiction he would be in so, so much pain so he couldn't go completely without something and also because of the coiled and clamped aneurisms the doctors always told us if he was throwing up too hard, sneezed or coughed too hard one could rupture. I don't know of anyone who could go through opiate withdrawl without being sick. And I was still young, 19 when the opiate addiction started getting bad, 21 when they were pushing me to let him fall. It hurts me to this day when they talk about him because most of them weren't there when he needed them. But that's all just a part of grief.
I think what feels different now 7 years in versus when it was fresh is how I've learned to live with the hole he left. It's always there, always haunting me. It's at birthday parties, holidays, memorable moments like my sons first day of school but it's also in the smaller, quieter moments like a tree during fall that's the perfect shade of dark red he loved, a Little Debbie snack truck passing me on the road and hearing my dad say "boy if that tipped over it'd be open season," it's in all the fleeting breezes that take me back to my last summer with him. The hole is big and unavoidable. It's my second shadow following me everywhere I go. In the early days I couldn't function, the hole swallowed me up until I couldn't breathe now that hole sits quietly in the corner with only me to witness it and only me to feel it. It's always reminding me of what I lost and how bright of a person he was. But that hole also serves as a reminder of who he could've been, how he would've loved the life I've built for myself, would've been proud of the mom I am. Those words may not mean anything coming from some random person who's just trying to make my grief more comfortable for them but when they come from that hole, from my own soul it turns the grief into a different form of love that still hurts, that's still sad but that makes the hole go from dark and cold to light and warm.
I hope whoever got to the end of this, no matter where you are in your grief journey you eventually get to feel the warmth of their spirit and memory instead of just the coldness of their absence(the warmth is not there all of the time but it's enough to make a difference.) I hope I can remind you that although no one will know the specific version of grief you carry and how lonely that is there are still people who can understand the weight it puts on your soul. I hope you know your loved one still matters, their stories still matter and the way you inherit parts of them means they will always be remembered even if it's by people that can't recognize those parts of them within you.
I think the cheesiest thing they say about grief that actually is true is that grief is the love you had for the person with no where left to go. Some days a find solace in that statement and some days it makes me angry and that's about as perfect of a description of grief as I can manage.