They say the loneliest walk you'll ever take is the one down the road of grief.
So far they are right (whoever they are). This post is focused on month one, the first 30 days after my dad died. I cannot fully put those feelings into words - lost, lonely, heavy, anguish, all-consuming, defeating, hopeless, intense. I don't know how many times I have used that word - intense. I never experienced anything like it before. I had lost people close to me and I cried and I felt sad and I had to process it. It reminded me of stark realities. It brought up feelings and fears. But none of it prepared me to lose my absolute most favorite person in the world.
Grieving doesn't always make sense to people. Some people, most people, are genuinely trying to help. Some do. Some don’t know how. Some think they know how you should be feeling and for how long. Some people want to quantify it. “Aaaaand that’s enough time. Moving on.” It's actually pretty aggravating.
There was a time before my dad's death when I didn't get it. knew how lucky I was that I had not had the same experience. My heart was sad for my friends. I wanted to be there for them. But I didn't understand. I didn’t know how. My heart had never been that broken, that shattered, that devastated. I cringe now thinking of phrases I may have said, with all good intentions, but that terribly missed the mark - and worse, may have caused anger and pain and feelings of being disconnected and alone. I am sorry to those people and to the people in the future that I still may not quite know how to support you.
The first month didn't bring with it too much anger. Most people have some semblance of loss and can be sympathetic for that period of time - a month. It seems acceptable to them. It fits within the perceived timeline and, for them, there is an endpoint. But for grief, there is no well-defined endpoint. Within the first month, people could tolerate seeing the grief. They even wanted to help. People continued to reach out to me. People still showed they care. There is a certain look people still gave me. But also, within the first month, I started hearing "don't cry", "be strong" "at least he...", "you should be...", "he wouldn't want you to be sad", “other people have been through much worse.”
First off, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I LOST!!! OK, so, maybe there was a little bit of anger in the first month.
September was a blur for me. The weekend after my dad’s funeral was tough. My dad and I had planned to decorate my porch for the fall. It had become a fun little tradition. We would go down the street to a pumpkin farm and pick out just the right ones. We would buy mums and straw and corn stalks (oh my!)
We would figure out the perfect arrangement. Then move it all around because, turns out, it wasn’t the perfect arrangement. We had talked all about it while floating around the pool. I told him “I might not do the corn stalk this year because it always sets off my security camera.” But I also knew he really liked it so I hadn’t totally decided. I told him about my new hocus pocus pillow that had just come in the mail. I was excited to decorate with it. He never got to see the pillow.
I felt like I had to do all of the decorating alone. I didn’t want help because it wouldn’t be with my dad and that was our thing. I was not able to muster up the strength to go that weekend. I walked around feeling numb most of the time but also feeling such melancholy. I don't know how to explain feeling both numb and such intense emotion. In a movie, they'd have to mute all the colors around me, not necessarily black and white, just dull. And it would be mostly from my POV -tunnel vision and blurred edges. And my eyes felt like they were constantly glaring at everything around me.
As I opened up to a few people, I knew they’d wonder, if just for a moment, if I was suicidal. I was not. I knew what I was saying. I knew how it sounded. I wasn’t being dramatic. I knew the words and emotions were scary and uncomfortable. But grief reared its ugly head. It was wreaking havoc and I had to be able to feel it all and recognize it and deal with all of it.
And in the hardest, the most gut wrenching of moments, I could always find strength in honoring my dad and his legacy.
“Legacy? What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.”- Hamilton
I did not want a future without my dad in it. I felt hopeless. I knew people told me it was hard for them and I’d learn to cope better. But I wasn’t concerned about any of that. I had to figure out how to survive this ever present, slowly suffocating kind of pain. It was relentless. I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my entire life. I would walk my dog at night, look up at the stars, and become completely overwhelmed.
The intensity, the enormity of it all, would quite literally take my breath. I never understood how grief could make it so hard to breathe. I couldn’t understand how I got here. There were nights I went to my knees, right out there in my backyard, and wept. One night I walked out and saw the ISS (International Space Station). I paused and waved because dad always told me he would wave to them. I whispered "hi" with a crack in my voice. Some nights I cried out. I talked to God. I questioned God. And then I would stop because it just seemed so predictable-someone questioning God after a significant loss. I talked to my dad. I told him I was sorry over and over again - that I loved him - that I missed him.
I was right there beside him and I was not able to help him. I became wrecked with guilt. People would tell me I was right where I was supposed to be or there was a reason I was with him. But it didn't feel that way. It felt like I made every wrong decision or I did not make enough decisions. It felt like any other person would have done a better job - handled it better. Why wasn’t it any other person? It did not feel like there was any good reason for me to have been the one to be there. I battled this guilt. And sometimes, it still creeps back in.
Physically, my dad's death took a toll. I started losing my hair in clumps. This lasted two or three months. I would wash my hair, run the shampoo through, and find a wad of my hair in my hand. I had trouble sleeping for 2 months straight. I couldn't fall asleep. I would cry and get snotty and not be able to breathe. I had to blow my nose constantly. I recommend having tissues (with lotion) at all times. When I finally did fall asleep, I would wake up about an hour later. I did not just wake up gently. I woke up startled, anxious, panicked, confused, scared and felt like I was dying. I would either feel like I couldn't breathe or felt a severe (phantom) cramp in my leg. This happened every. single. night. for 2 months. I finally reached out to my doctor and started taking a low dose sleep aid.
My mind was racing at all times. It was constantly in a battle. I could not keep up. I tried to explain it to people. They just seemed to fake a smile and didn't have much to say. Really they kind of looked at me like I was crazy. I started to notice I was becoming forgetful, extremely forgetful actually. I found myself filling out forms and struggling to remember how to spell words. Luckily, that kind of forgetfulness didn’t seem to last long. But I continue to write things down because I still am very forgetful with times and plans, etc.
I could not learn any new information. I could feel that I was not capable to hear something new, process it, learn it, and put it into action. It felt like I had met my limits. I was maxed out. My head felt tight and was on the verge of just exploding. I would try to recall something and it’s as if I could feel that part of my brain shut down. I knew that memory was lost until another day. That doesn't make sense to people and it also got a few scoffs and eye rolls hidden behind those same placating smiles. I get it. It doesn't make sense.
And, maybe, one reason it doesn’t make sense is because too many people haven’t been able or haven’t known how to share their own experiences.
I mean in all honesty, when things are going well who really wants to be brought down with the heaviness of grief? Who wants to read or think about that kind of heartache? It’s easy to overlook the pain when you haven’t been there. Or maybe nothing I described here sounds familiar. My experience is my experience. Others have a completely different view and have walked or will walk down a very different road.
Loss affects each of us in a unique way. Grief is still a lonely walk. No one can walk it for you. But there is help to be found along the way.
Even with all the painful emotions and blurry memories, I did take steps during that first month of grieving. I will follow up with a Part Two highlighting those first few steps.
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