One year, ago my papa left this Earth. Too early. I’m still mad about it. It still pains me to think of how he died. Without a voice. Doing all the treatments to give him more time. It hardly worked.
Lately, I’ve been working on social-emotional wellness with John boy. He’s had trouble at school adjusting. The books I’ve been reading with him are helpful for me too. Last night, we read a book about having a lot of tangled-up emotions. When the section about sadness came up, he asked me what it means to ‘experience loss.’ He kept saying, “is it like being lost in the forest?” Cue the tears. I wish my dad was just lost in the forests of Yellowstone. And I suppose he is wandering the terrain in some respect.
The term ‘lost’ best describes how someone feels after ‘losing’ a loved one. As an adult, when is the last time you got lost? Like you didn’t know where you were? Especially now with how we can navigate in our cars, these experiences are probably few and far between. Grief feels like being lost. Being lost as an adult is different than as a child. Sometimes I get mad. I should know where I am and what to do. Anxiety creeps in. Denial. Frustration. All the things. It also comes down to the fact that the older you are the less likely it is that you do things for the first time. We are creatures are habit and tend to stick to routines and hardly venture out of our comfort zone. At least not on a daily basis. So when you experience loss for the first time, it will stop you in your tracks. You will try to reason. Rationalize. But it’s new so you have nothing legitimate to reference. Maybe attending a funeral as a child, maybe vague memories of a parent coping with loss, or worse yet movies or social media. How did my dad’s death feel like my first loss? It came 5 years after my mom. I thought I would be good at it. Nope. See, this is my first time losing my dad.
His passing not only started firsts ‘without my dad’ but was compounded with firsts ‘without both of my parents.’ It was a lot. It was heavy. The holidays were different. It was the first time I felt overwhelmed with which parent to honor and how. These pressures I put on myself. If you know me, you know this stuff matters. I was blind-sighted when decorating my tree. I felt like the small area I used to dedicate to my mom was now crowded. Now I needed space for my dad and Bruno too. I also have a commemorative shelf with her ashes and other trinkets of love for my mom that I decorate differently for holidays and felt guilty I hadn’t set up one for my dad. I also have not found an urn that is good enough for the Wolf Man. How do you find a container suited to hold the ashes of your beloved father? No clue. Here comes that feeling of lost in the forest. Again.
While this may paint a dark and dreary picture, there are days I feel like I’m doing right by him. When I make someone ugly laugh. When I connect with my students teaching passionately. Or when I act goofy and ‘cringey’ with my kids. All these come straight from my papa. So I know I am leading a life he is proud of. I also love how people around me know to talk about him (and my mom). Keeping their memory alive. While it’s unfair my kids won’t get to know him better, the stories we tell can fill that void. And man, the stories are epic. Lots of snorting laughter. Lots of silliness, love, and most of all, life.