I will start with the obvious piece of advice….you will never truly get over this feeling. It will hurt every day for the rest of your life. The amount of pain will not be as intense every day, I promise. Some days will be harder than others and yes, you will have the days where you are mad as hell! Make a note to yourself….it’s ok to be angry too!
Growing up you want to think that you have the perfect parents, the perfect family, but in all honesty (and realism) you don’t. Your dad will be your best friend, biggest hero, biggest fan, toughest critic, and best person you know growing up. You would like to go through life blindly thinking that this is how it will always be. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always end up that way. The dad that you see every single day turns into the dad that you see every other weekend and sometimes during the week. Knowing I had a dentist appointment during the week brought some kind of excitement to my week simply because I knew dad was picking me up and taking me to lunch after.
You hit your teenage years and the every other weekend visits occur less and less. Best friends, the mall, football games, sleepovers become your world and you squeeze the weekend visits into a half of a day on Sunday. And then 18 hits and all of the sudden the visits and phone calls and checkups are non-existent. Yes, I was an “adult,” but also still needed my dad. Stubbornness takes over and you decide that you are going to cut off the phone calls and checkups also. Obviously, he has amnesia and forgot he has a daughter, so I will ghost him and not allow the explanation or the good-bye out of my life. Life is fine and moving along smoothly without him.
You see him in passing and when I say in passing I mean on holidays with his new family and have to act like you don’t see him, don’t care and it’s not ripping out your heart to see him joking around with her daughter. I am in my 20’s, I am grown up, I am fine is what you continue to tell yourself.
You then wake up when you’re 25 and you’re getting dressed on a cold Thursday morning to go bury your dad. Your dad that was your best friend from birth to 17 ½ and a stranger from 17 ½ to 25. Your dad who used to push you to do better in school, tried to teach you how to water ski, taught you how to drive, taught you life lessons that you might not remember now, but things that he needed you to know.
Though some will say I had many years to mourn the loss of my father, I will never, ever really mourn the loss of him. The grief stages between losing him to another family and losing him to cancer permanently will not even come close. You will grieve and mourn in your own ways and that is ok. Do not ever, ever let anybody tell you that you don’t deserve to be sad that he died. That is and will always be your blood right. You will always be allowed to be angry that he left you all those years ago and ghosted you out of his everyday life. Just because you get angry at him from time to time does not mean that you grieve his death any less or love him any less.
So, my advice to you as you move forward in your grieving process is this: grieve how you need to grieve. cry how often and wherever you need to cry, no explanation needed. Laugh when you think of something funny. Yell when you think of something bad. Lean on the support of other people and help them understand when you need to talk and when you need to keep it to yourself. Don’t feel the need to explain how the best day can turn into the worst day when you realize he missed it. Don’t be afraid of the emotional rollercoaster that this experience will send you on for the rest of your life. And don’t ever let anyone tell you how to grieve or how you should have grieved. Don’t apologize for crying too much or not crying enough.
And always, always, always remember that he did love you regardless, even down to his last breath on this earth.
Sincerely,
A girl who lost her dad in more ways than one
