Grief & Time

This showed up in my Facebook memories this week. I'm glad I wrote down how grief can feel.

Almost Father’s Day. Saturday, June 17, 2017.

One of the best scenes in the movie Swingers is when Rob is trying to soothe Mikey’s sadness about his breakup. He ends by saying, “You wake up one day and you actually miss the pain...for the same reason that you miss them, because you lived with it for so long…”

I understood this when I first heard it as a twentysomething, and now I understand it differently, as someone who lost her dad at 45.

My dad had medical issues for so long that my mom, sister and I had normalized uncertainty - there was always something to worry about, think about, help with. There were long periods of calm, but we always knew there was more to come, a specific kind of pain that comes with loving someone who has medical challenges.

But inside the challenge there is a lot of love, mindfulness, and opportunity to show up. Life slows down, family takes precedence, the things that most people worry about get smaller, and life takes on an “earthy” feel – an understanding of what’s true.

The pain has wisdom – hospital visits held the knowing that there’s nowhere else I’m supposed to be; a kind of confidence that is hard to come by. Every time my dad would get better (and that happened again, and again…) there was a specific kind of joy, a knowing that there was more time, something to be grateful for.

So now that he is gone I notice that I miss the pain of the challenge - only because of the wisdom and joy that lived inside the pain. I am glad he is no longer suffering or struggling - being present for that stretched human limits. But I do miss showing up, I miss knowing what to do.

I miss watching him perk up when we showed up for a visit. I miss having him tell me that he feels 100%, even though he never really did. But that was the dad in him, he said that for us. And we let him do that because we knew it kept him going.

In the first couple of days after he died, I lost track of time and space, I didn’t feel connected to what was a normal day. Appointments, emails, social media. Everything felt so vague and unimportant like I had launched into space and observed how we are all just running around like little ants, hoping to get to the next important place. But where are we going? What are we running to?

I really struggled when people told me how busy they were, or had so many appointments, or other things to do – I wondered if they understood that time had stopped for me, that clocks didn’t matter anymore, that all the running and moving just kept us from feeling our lives.

I understand that not everyone can feel what I am feeling, nor should they. We all have our own families, our own stuff, our own things that need to be attended to.

But I learned that showing up for others can mean momentarily stepping away from the clock, even if we aren’t truly off it. To not mention what’s next, but instead to meet someone where they are – in a place of frozen time. A place where they are fully feeling now instead of figuring out what comes next.

It’s only been a few weeks, and of course the clock and calendar are coming back into play. While writing a check yesterday someone told me the date and I couldn’t believe it – mid June? In my body it still felt like May, I had lost two weeks somewhere.

I am still slow, definitely behind, but I’m OK with the schedule not being my guiding force. I’m connected a little, but disconnected just enough so I can move in and out of memories, I’m still trying to piece myself and my dad back together.

I spent so much time with him as someone who needed help, that I forgot about the other guy, the one who was so-much-my-dad and helped me all the time. Seeing pictures of him healthy has helped me put some things back in place, it has helped me see him as a full person again.

Some friends have made a point to leave something at my door every day since he died. Something just shows up – food, candles, oils, notes, flowers – and it’s played a huge role in healing.

Because every time I find something out there I remember - I remember to stop the time and love my dad. I remember that the old pain is gone, but a new one is here.

And within the new pain is a feeling of appreciation that this guy was my father. Through his life choices and then his illness he taught me to stay close to what matters. To slow down and do now.

“When you get here I hope you can just relax and take it easy for a while.” - said by John Cassani, whenever anyone was visiting him in Florida, Galena, or wherever he may be.