Month: May 2016

A few days after dad died, my friend sent me this quote: You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only option you have.

I think about that a lot – how strength has given me balance when nothing else can. My mom, brother and I have all held our composure during moments I thought would leave us broken beneath their weight. It was like that again last week, when the first anniversary of dad’s passing eclipsed us on an otherwise average Thursday.

Like most things this year, the anticipation was worse than the actual event. Holidays, milestones – we’d see them coming and brace for the riptide of emotions that would pull us under. But they wouldn’t. Those moments would come and though our hearts were heavy, we’d laugh, and smile and remember. It was always the preceding days that were hell. That’s how last week was anyway, when I felt numb and detached on Tuesday and Wednesday and cried into my pillow.

But when Thursday came, and we piled into my brother’s Jeep – there weren’t any tears. And they didn’t follow us as we drove north, spending a weekend away sitting lakeside on a beautiful, but chilly beach. Somehow, strength ushered us forward.

That’s not to say it’s always that way. It took me so long to utter the words “dead” and “died” when speaking of dad, versus the softer “passing” and “gone” that I thought would lessen the pain. And there’s so many times I don’t want to be strong – even now with a year that’s passed. But it feels almost uncomfortable to fall apart now.

It’s not malicious, but as time passes – people forget. Or they may expect you to have evolved beyond the confines of your grief. They see you smile and think everything is fine. It’s made me self-conscious in an unexpected way. I stay quiet, because the truth is a lot of what I’m feeling is so ugly that I’m afraid being honest about these feelings, even to just to say them out loud, will break my heart open and the pain will flood right in.

When I am around family, I don’t want to upset them. Around friends and coworkers, I didn’t want to seem needy. And around strangers, I didn’t want to be inappropriate. So I smile, crack jokes and laugh when something is hilarious, as I always have.

It’s strange territory for everyone. Friends and family don’t know what they should ask, if anything at all. They don’t want to upset me, but don’t want to be insensitive either. And most times, I don’t know what to say. My relationship with my grief is constantly changing and, truthfully, it takes some rediscovering for how to be around loved ones, and I’m sure they with me.

But beneath all of the insecurity and fear, there’s strength – even when it’s faint. There’s a fire that burns hotter as things get harder. That’s human nature, after all – to rise when you’re trembling.

I think of my dad in those hopeless moments, and how he’d tease me whenever I was brazen – typically when I was giving a guy a hard time, or being aggressive at work. “You’re hard, Toots,” he’d say, dragging out the word “hard” in an almost Southern drawl. I know he’d say it to knock some sense to me, but I’m pretty sure there was a sense of pride behind it, that he raised a tough cookie.

But dad was hard too, and I’ll never stop being a tough cookie, just for him.

One.

One day turned into many and, somehow, one year has come and gone without dad in it.

I’ve gotten a lot of advice in this past year. Some of it was truly helpful, and some of it felt impossible. But some of it I heard time and time again – particularly that the first year is the hardest.

And they were so right. And wrong.

Things moved quickly when dad was diagnosed. He’d been having bouts with indigestion for months, but it would come and go so mildly that he thought nothing of it. Maybe a stomach bug. Maybe a lingering flu. Maybe.

Then one weekend he got very sick, violently ill. Sick enough that for as doctor-averse as he was, he made an appointment. That was on a Monday. On Tuesday they scheduled an x-ray, and the results so alarming, they scheduled him for surgery to remove a tumor first thing Thursday morning. Life changes very quickly that way.

The night before his surgery, I felt the weight of what was coming – I just didn’t want to admit it. I told myself over and over again that things would be fine, as I watched the sunset melt over the Chicago horizon from my balcony. And when I went to sleep, I prayed. I prayed that this wouldn’t be the last night I would lay my head down knowing life as it always was. I let my mind turn over comforting stories and statistics in an effort to put it at ease. I lied to myself in the only way I knew how, that if I couldn’t picture life without him in it, that it simply couldn’t be.

When my phone rang the next morning, once dad was out of surgery, and my brother’s voice broke over the line, I knew. I was already flying home later that day to attend a friend’s wedding over the weekend, and moved it up as early as I could to be with everyone. It was one of the longest, loneliest days. I shuttled back and forth to the bathroom several times while we waited to board, falling apart in some dirty stall in Midway airport. I forced a smile to flight attendants when boarding the plane and hid behind my sunglasses. And when mom picked me up I cried the whole way to the hospital. We both did.

He was starting to come out of anesthesia when we got to the room. When we stood by his bedside he looked up and asked the question we didn’t want to answer. “Did they find something?”

The next year that followed was a blurred mess of doctor appointments, hospital stays and the agonizing slow down of dad’s life.

Although there were happy moments mixed in there too, I try not to think about it.

I especially don’t like to go back to those final days. I haven’t made peace with them, and the past year hasn’t done much to remove me from them. The pressure of his hand when he’d squeeze the fingers that I’d curl tightly into his palm. The hum of machines and weighted steps of hurried nurses throughout the ICU. The look of dad’s face when we did all we could do for him – get him home – as he looked around and took his last breath. Everything is still so painfully vivid.

So I try to bury those memories. Dad wouldn’t want to be remembered that way.

Everything since has been experiencing life in a foreign, unwelcome way. A year of facing long-standing traditions without dad there. Of going through birthdays, and holidays and important days with a weary heart. And the awful everydays that sneak up. The random Tuesday evening when all I want to do is call the house and hear his voice. Or a sunny Sunday morning when I wish we could share a quiet moment on the deck.

See, what people don’t tell you – is that time hurts as much as it heals. That even though the natural rhythm of life has dragged me forward, the growing time that’s passed makes it more permanent. That even though a year is behind me, a lifetime without him still stretches ahead.

For a long time, I was intensely angry. It just took up residence where so much joy and gratitude had been. And, sure, there’s still some there – but it’s receded over the months. Months where amazing people have come in and reminded me how wonderful life can be. Family, friends, even perfect strangers – they’ve helped break through even the most gloomy of days.

It’s hard to explain how I feel. It can still be such a tumultuous swell of emotions. But at its core, I just really, really miss my father. Its an ache that never stops, but my hope is that maybe as life tumbles on, other joys will help ebb some of it away.

But what I wouldn’t give for just one more. One more year. One more day. One more conversation. One more hug. One more moment.

One.

 

What I hope has come across here, is that I had an incredible father. One that has given me so much unending joy and perspective over the years. Even in the most difficult moments, I know how lucky I am.

But what you should also know – is what an amazing mother I have. And how amazing she’s been through all of this. And how much she is still teaching me about being strong, even when I don’t think I can be.

I don’t use the word “mom” lightly – because she is one in so many other ways than who she is to me. Her heart never quits, but just keeps opening even in challenging times. It’s an almost unimaginable task, but not for her.

Our home has been a place of comfort for so many people over the years. Friends, kids around the neighborhood, family members – they always had a plate for dinner, someone to talk to or a quiet space if they needed to go somewhere to breathe. It’s a door that never closes.

For me, she’s been an unwavering source of love and solace. She’s talked me through panic, quieted my tears and been there to answer an endless amount of big and little questions. And even though it broke her heart, she supported me and let me go – when I first decided to move away to continue growing in new ways.

But lately, she’s done even more. She’s stepped aside and let me cry when I thought I would never stop. She’s let me scream and explode. And she’s done what she can to make me smile and find light in an otherwise grim year – whether it was simply sending me a silly card, or putting me on a plane to get away for a few days.

You see, it can be hard not to get lost in your own point of view. It’s the nature of grief, to regress into your own feelings. We’ve each done it – trying to stay afloat. But I see how she’s risen above it, and tried to become a harbor for my brother and I when we’re upset. She’s absorbed our pain as part of her own, and handled it with grace.

And dad. She became an extension of him in his last year, doing for him what he couldn’t do himself. Championing his treatment. Shuttling him to and from appointments. Chasing doctors. Pushing for tests. Cooking whatever he could stomach. Helping him with bandages and dressings. Holding his hand. Loving him maybe more than ever and never, ever giving up.

I know this has been infinitely harder than she will allow herself to admit to my brother and I. That there are more bad days that she smiles through in front of us. And that there is so much of her pain that I could never understand – and she is entitled to all of it. But she’s protecting her kids. She always has.

That’s something I can never repay.

So with it being Mother’s Day this Sunday, I just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge mom – Debbie Do – a woman who is so selfless in all that she does. A woman who has given me an extraordinary blueprint for being a good person. A woman whose strength has been inspiring not just now, but always. A woman who knows how to love without limits. And a woman who makes me laugh and fills my life with wonder.

Thank you for all that you do and are. I am so incredibly proud of you.