Surviving without Dad: Month One

It was a month yesterday since my father left us. We've survived a month. Maybe you can even say we got "lucky": Christmas and Covid (a.k.a., Covid Christmas #2) distracted us from facing the fact that my father can no longer be reached physically -- my only option is to think about him, to ruminate over his life. I cannot touch him or talk to him the way I once did.

I am writing today largely because of my fellow grievers who have so kindly come forward to offer comfort, some of them suggesting the posts I've written here about my father have resonated with them.

I am writing perhaps especially for those of us experiencing ambiguous grief, to steal Pauline Boss's term (please see Krista Tippett's interview with her from the NPR show, "On Being").

In our case, 'ambiguous' because while my father died a month ago, he ceased to be the person we'd always known at least a year ago -- so I haven't been grieving for simply a month. I've been grieving a kind of nebulous loss for a year -- he was still alive but since words trickled out of him during his final year on Earth and he did almost nothing but rest, the best part of him was dead to me, unreachable (note, I speak only for myself).

Yet I was still absolutely walloped by his passing! Wracked with sobs so deep, they seem to rise up from the Earth's core. Even yesterday!

It's hard to characterize how I'm doing; I am fine in many ways and beleaguered in other ways. Nothing original here. Like I said in my essay for Brevity last year, I am just one more person discovering the non-secret that our parents will die but I still have to say my piece.

Christmas went well (well-ish?), and I was fairly content, perhaps because we entertained my mother, which provided a perfect distraction ("Leo, don't let the dog lick Grandma's face.") Plus, I could surreptitiously write a bit in between chores and snacks. I even ran on the treadmill!

But still, I’m in a club I don’t want to be in. The club for fatherless people.

I've allowed myself moments of drowning in sorrow, especially on car rides. Actually the car has been my getaway to grief for more than a year. Books have triggered tears, too: especially The Invisible String by Patrice Karst, which before the homily at my father's funeral mass was entirely unknown to me. My cousin sent it to Leo afterwards, and another friend sent a copy, too, but I think it was more cathartic for me than Leo. Spoiler alert: if you're feeling wobbly, beware the page where the boy asks about "Uncle Brian in heaven." I can't make it through it without dissolving into tears. And my God, how true: we are connected to everyone we love, no matter where they are.

A part of me didn’t want to leave 2021 behind for one simple reason: I had an almost indescribable sensation of Daddy belonging now to 2021, since that’s the year he died. 

He won’t be moving into 2022 with the rest of us. 

So to leave 2021 behind – especially to reject it, as many are moved to do toward the old year as we get down to the final days – seemed cruel. As New Year's Eve approached, I imagined him almost living inside the calendar on our wall. In my mind’s eye, I was picturing the calendar page, picturing his tiny figure in the square for Dec. 5, and I felt as though each day forward was a day away from him. And I don’t want that.

In my diary, I find quick mentions of all the ways his death is informing decisions big and small.

Like discarding the flowers from his funeral that my oldest friends had sent.

The moment was coming, the moment even had already passed. The moment when the funeral flowers from Jeanette, Beth, Laura and Tina were no longer pretty. But I put it off. And miraculously, Mike collaborated -- or conspired? -- with me to keep them as long as possible.

But before lunch on Sunday, I said they had to go. The water was brown and dirty, some of the stems covered in thick coats of mold. The flowers themselves had dried out at least a week before, probably more like two.

They'd sat in the dining room, presiding over our home since we returned from the funeral. Keeping us company throughout Christmas and New Year’s. Reminding me, but not unpleasantly.

I knew what I was doing while I dithered, because when I handed the flowers to Mike to discard outside, it became clear I was parting with them. 

It became clear I didn’t want to part with them. 

He stood for a moment on the porch and breathed in their scent. Then turning to me, he said, “They still smell good.” I breathed in their scent, too, then left him to go his way with the flowers. Closing the screen door, I knelt down to collect the petals that had dropped to the floor. I collected maybe 10-12 petals from the foyer and the dining room and the kitchen counter, and deposited them in a little tin tray Beth had given to me years before.

In the briefest of flashes, I saw why people like to keep loved ones’ ashes. It is indeed something of them, unlike pictures, which capture their image but do not contain them, do not constitute them.

I broke down and cried pretty hard for a moment. 

They were just funeral flowers. Long past their prime, the plain glass vase sullied with dingy green and brown earthen stains (because I'd let them languish). Anonymous in some ways. Untouched by my father. But a testament of my love for him and my friends’ undying support in my hour of need. 

Tiny moments, right? That nonetheless loom large. God save me the day I have to cancel their home delivery subscription to the New York Times. Or sell their home.

For the general reader, I've probably shared too much. But I am speaking to the tribe of grievers. A tribe I now call my own.

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