There are three days of the year that are always hard for me. September 17th, December 3rd, and the third Sunday of June. My three annual reminders of a lacking in my life, gone now almost 7 years.
I try to speak often and openly about grief. I try to bring it up in conversation lightly. I try to create space to share. I try to reject the idea that grief must be processed in silence and solitude, with sorrow and stoicism. I like to tell people, the least interesting thing about my dad is the fact that he is dead.
My dad was an absolute light. He loved plants, the water, his family. He loved as deeply as he laughed loudly. So, very deeply. He worked hard and he also slacked off. He was gentle, wise, deeply human. There is a point in our lives as sons and daughters where we realize our parents are only people. I didn’t realize this till after I had lost him.
I harbor so many frustrations surrounding our relationship. I feel anger about what-ifs, and guilt about should haves. Phone calls he should have made, phone calls I should have answered. Resentment towards the grinding wheel of time. Rage towards the slow, painful, and relentless way that cancer can consume a life.
In 7 years, I have come to some peace as well. I was 18 when I lost my dad, absolutely in the thick of developmental angst and rebellion. It wasn’t the first loss in my life, but nothing compared to the way I was absolutely shaken to my core when he passed. I heard the news the second cloudy morning of my solo trip in Venice and I think if the streets weren’t already made of water, they would have been anyways by the time I left.
I have since talked with many friends about the different ways in which they have lost parents or other loved ones. For some, it happened suddenly, for me it was a sickness that slowly consumed my dad over many years. We each acknowledge the different kinds of ache that instills.
Grief is something we will each experience almost inevitably at some point in our lives. I don’t know exactly why it is treated as an individual experience instead of a collective one, but I know I have very often felt alone in navigating it. Not because the experience isn’t relatable, but simply because it is not something we talk about at dinner. When I bring up my dad, I am always met with apologies, bowed heads, and condolences. Gestures I know come from equal parts support and discomfort around the topic of death. It is nobody’s fault that they don’t know how to respond, but I’d like to think someday we can all talk about loss a little more openly.
Today is September 17th and if my dad were here today, he would be turning 54 years old. On December 3rd of this year, he will have been gone for 7 years, frozen forever at 47.
Every year on his birthday I allow myself to feel equal parts mad and sad. He should be here. I deserved a dad. He deserved to see today. This isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair.
Most of the time, I feel like I don’t know what to do on his birthday. It gets harder every year to come up with something that I think will do his memory justice, but as I get older I have realized the best thing I can do is continue living the life I’ve built for myself. Signing a lease for an apartment where I can see the Space Needle out my window. Hanging pictures of my siblings on my wall. Going rollerskating. Writing. Making dreams and chasing them. Going to the top of the world and not stopping there.
This morning I rode the elevator up 73 floors to the top of Columbia Tower in Downtown Seattle. One of the last times I saw my dad was in that building. He met me in Seattle as I visited the city to tour UW’s campus in 2015, dreaming so viciously of the day I’d call this place home. I watched him laboriously climb the stairs in front of the building, fighting against the sickness consuming him just so he could join me on my trip to the top floor. In the years since he’s never really left my side. He sat next to me on the train ride this morning and rode with me to the summit of Seattle’s tallest building all over again, almost 8 years later. The only difference is the stairs no longer hurt him and the climb is quieter. I have more to say than he does. The advice doesn’t come in phone calls anymore and the love does not come in hugs, but the company stays.
I think what I really want to say is that my dad was right all along. For all of the ups and downs of our relationship, one thing remained constant: he would never let me say I couldn’t do something. He loved to tell me the same story about when I was little and struggling to button a sweater of mine while profusely refusing help. I eventually buttoned that sweater and as a girl that loves a metaphor, I have realized I can button every sweater I am ever presented with in my life.
Today I will feel sad, and as the day comes to a close I will remind myself there is deep joy in the fact that I am my father incarnate. I do not walk a step without him by my side.
I refuse to be sad every time I think about my dad. He is so much more than his passing: he is 47 years of laughter, love, stories, and learning. The least interesting thing about my dad is the fact that he is dead.
I see my dad when I walk through the woods and every time I see a Uhaul. I see him in passionflowers and when I look in the mirror at the gap between my teeth. I think about him when I play soccer and every time I pick up my guitar.
Someone wrote once that grief is simply love with nowhere to go and today I am so overflowing with love that it is pouring out my eyes and into the tissues I keep by my bedside. And it is okay if you do not know what to say. Just know in your moments of grief and loss, you are not alone. I feel your hurt and I see the love saturating your bones with sadness. I share your grief, I make room for your loneliness. I will keep you company in a world so huge our pain sometimes feels insignificant.
Call your parents, hug your friends, remember that life’s beauty comes in part from its fragility. Know it is okay to not feel okay. Feel welcome to thrash and rage and wallow in your grief. Know you are never truly alone.
My father will not turn 54 this year, but I will turn 26, and I never could have done that without him.
