Daily Disasters
by John on Nov.17, 2009, under Main Stuff
Today was… very, very busy. I got a decent amount done at work, and not all of it was completely obsolesced before I left, so that’s a tick in the ‘plus’ column. The Xbox 360 Fall ’09 Update landed providing me with mostly useless features– but it does include last.fm, meaning I can finally have a good trance stream again, after living for a year without The System 82. And, to top it all off, a personal issue that had been looming over me is one major step closer to becoming resolved. But, something else happened today. Or rather, didn’t happen.
I didn’t get to wish my father a happy birthday.
It’s been just barely under nine months since he passed away. Nowadays, the pain is only there when I go looking for it, usually, but even then it doesn’t take long to surface. I got a chance to go through some of my old posts here and there over the past week or so, and one particular gem stood out. About this time last year, and I’m not even sure of the context on this, I had made an off-handed remark to him, saying, “Well, I’ll take a vow of silence!” His immediate response was, “Even if you did, you couldn’t.” The exchange had me in stitches then, and when I came across it again, I once more laughed until I cried. Of course, the crying was for a different reason.
I’m not entirely sure how I should go about this whole grief thing, either. On the one hand, his absence is still a really powerful force on me, and I’d be a callous liar to simply drop him out of my life just because he’s not here. On the other hand, I can’t let his memory, good as it is, drag me down in everything I do. In February, I wrote that the wound should not be left open too short or too long. The problem I have now is that I’m looking at an emotional and spiritual trauma with scientific and logical eyes, which means I’ll never know the answer. At least, not until it’s passed, and I recognize if I’ve chosen well or poorly.
In the interim, though, it’s enough to simply spare him a thought now and again, and to take each step as it is laid before me. Knowing that I have the love and support of so many people, and knowing that I take these steps with his memory by my side, I cannot falter.
November 18th, 2009 on 1:10 pm
You said:
“I’m not entirely sure how I should go about this whole grief thing, either. On the one hand, his absence is still a really powerful force on me, and I’d be a callous liar to simply drop him out of my life just because he’s not here. On the other hand, I can’t let his memory, good as it is, drag me down in everything I do. In February, I wrote that the wound should not be left open too short or too long. The problem I have now is that I’m looking at an emotional and spiritual trauma with scientific and logical eyes, which means I’ll never know the answer. At least, not until it’s passed, and I recognize if I’ve chosen well or poorly.”
Time is the answer. You’ll go through the grief in a few different ways, including looking at how you’re going through it and wondering if you should be handling it differently. Time, and having attacked the problem from multiple angles in your own head, will eventually give way to segue you from thoughts about ‘I think I’m over it now’ to ‘Now I really think I’m over it’ to finally eventually being reconciled and not trying to prove to yourself you are.
But this process can be slow or long, can have stronger and weaker moments, and will just eventually, eventually, settle through.
I’m not explaining this well, but the fact of the matter is that time will help because time will give you the time to do everything else… to view it one way, rethink how you’re viewing it and try another way, and so on until eventually you’re more or less reconciled. Time to heal has been provided and more time yet will be spent.
Sorry if this isn’t the best encouragement, but please let me know if you ever want to take me up on seeing if I can do better.
November 21st, 2009 on 1:41 am
It is the sort of thing that ebbs and flows over time, but the more time has passed, the less flowing and the more ebbing there will be. Losing a parent is not something one ever truly gets over – my mother lost her mother over thirty years ago and still goes through times when the loss hurts to this day – but the peaks of grief do become fewer, further between, and less pronounced over time. The fact that you loved him means that not only SHOULD you not stop thinking about your father now that he is gone, but you almost certainly never WILL forget him. However, I dare say the memories will eventually be oriented more towards fond reflection of the times you had with him than towards anguish that there will no more time spent with him.
I’ve gone through this myself recently, of course – my dad’s birthday was at the end of September, and I’m expecting Christmas to be a rather bittersweet experience this year and probably for the next year or two thereafter. Among other things, my family did usually have lively discussions about soccer when we were all gathered together (well, all of us except for my sister, who is utterly indifferent toward the sport), but part of what made them lively was the fact that my dad supported a different club (Arsenal FC of London) to my mum (Liverpool FC), and my brother and I ended up following her side rather than his. Any discussions of soccer henceforth are likely to be rather less animated. But it is memories of those discussions that I will always remember fondly, and it is memories like them that I expect to eventually dominate my thoughts when I think of him, not the fact that he is not here anymore to form new memories. (I’m far from the only one – a number of the speakers at his memorial service in September were friends and business colleagues of his who, like both of my parents, originally hailed from the UK and were ardent soccer fans, but they supported different clubs again, so they also had many animated discussions with my dad about the sport.)
To be sure, my experiences are going to be very different to yours. My family had time to prepare emotionally for my dad’s final moments, and while they were not painless by any stretch of the imagination, it does make for a different experience than the sort of very sudden loss which happened to you and your family. But if you have as many fond memories of your dad as I have of mine – and most of what I’ve read of your comments on the subject seem to indicate that you do – those fond memories will eventually replace most of the grief that happens when you think about him. It will take time, and how long it will take is impossible to predict because everyone handles grief in different ways, as Slip has already mentioned, but it will happen eventually.
And don’t be too shy about looking for ways to distract yourself from your grief. I’m sure your dad wouldn’t want you to slow your life down for too long to mourn him any more than I know my dad wouldn’t want that for the members of my family. Think of it as a sort of way of honouring his memory through action rather than lack of it.
I know it hurts, and I can’t honestly say it will ever completely stop hurting (again, losing a beloved parent, particularly at a young age, is something one never completely forgets), but in time it will hurt less often and in a less pronounced way. Above all else, cherish the good memories you do have of him, and, if possible, use them to motivate yourself into carrying on as before but in honour of his memory and his role in your life.