Just breathe

It’s been a month. A month since I sat in a grocery store parking lot in the dark and heard my sister tell me through a crackly phone connection, “Daddy died.”

(I still hear it over and over in my head, when I try to sleep, on my many long drives home in the dark. Every time, I think how I hadn’t thought of him as “Daddy” in so many years, but how it sounds less like some stupid tongue-twister to say it the way she did than, “Dad died.”)

Today has been one of the bad days. It didn’t start out that way, and I’m not sure exactly when or how it turned. Maybe it’s because it’s a month today. Or because the plans I had for today fell through. Or because it’s Sunday (I don’t know why Sundays are so much harder than other days, but they were after Mom died, too). Or because I saw a guy who looked startlingly like my dad in the audience at a game I reffed last night. Maybe it's a little bit of all of those things. Or maybe it's none of them. Grief doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense a whole lot of the time. 

I don’t know how to write about Dad’s death. It’s not like Mom’s, where we had months – even years – to prepare for it and say goodbye. There are many things left unsaid between my dad and me. Many questions left unasked that will never be answered. And my relationship with my dad was much more complicated than the one I had with my mom, in so many ways.

But it’s not just Dad’s death I’m grieving right now. I am still trying to get used to this untethered feeling that comes from being an orphan. (A couple of people have taken issue with my use of this word, but it’s how I feel. My parents are gone and even though there are good, kind, loving people who fill parent-type roles in my life, they are not and never will be my parents.)

Shortly after Dad died, I went through my parents’ wedding album. I held a photograph in my hands of my parents and their parents and even though I already knew it, I couldn’t help marvel at the fact that everyone in that picture was dead. They all looked happy (and young) on that day 40 years ago…and now they’re all gone.

And I’m sitting here and even though I know it’s not true, even though I know there are so many incredible people in my life who truly and deeply care for me, I feel so alone. And small. It’s funny how the aloneness always shrinks you.

I was listening to the Joshua Radin song “Everything’ll Be Alright” earlier tonight. I always liked the line, “There’s a hole in my pocket that’s about her size.” I feel like the loneliness could shrink me enough to slip through a hole in somebody’s pocket.

The benefit of having gone through this before is that I know this is just a bad day. I know that it’ll turn again (probably just as fast) and I won’t feel like I’m just bobbing in dark water, trying to keep afloat. …But it’s hard to remember that when you’ve lost sight of the shore. It’s hard to remember that when you’re just focusing on breathing.