GRIEF, PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE

Grief can creep up behind you when you would least expect it to. That is most likely because your deceased loved one is never not on your mind. My father’s memory replays in my head over and over again, everywhere I go. There is no mute button, no way to forget, even for a second, that he is gone.

I am traveling the West Coast this summer, so I knew that I would be meeting new people, and would eventually have to tell them about my dad. How could I hide something so big and prevalent in my life? If my main Instagram bio did not draw them to my blog and give it away, it would surely be the way I speak about him and my family. I discuss my mother in the present tense and my father in the past. My mother plays tennis; my father was a scratch golfer. It is my mom’s birthday; my father loved that movie. I remember when I started to talk about my father after his death and how strange it felt to suddenly speak like he was not here. Almost two years later, it still does not feel right.

At the movie theater, I sat in my chair and nearly started bawling. The movie was not sad in the slightest, so I questioned how I even got to such a sad place, but I was smart enough to figure it out. I wanted to tell my dad that my sister and I saw, “Fast and Furious 9,” because I thought he would think that was cool. Then I came to realize that all I desired was a conversation with him, to hear his voice. Not just from old videos, but be able to call him on the phone. Dial his number and watch as my screen switches to “connecting.” And then it hit me so hard, it nearly rocked me: I have not had a conversation with him in almost two years.

Two years in terms of grief may not seem so long, but in reality, that is about 730 days of mourning someone you loved dearly. Time continues, even after I felt as though my world stopped, and so much has happened since he died. It feels like I have lived a whole other life without him in it. Luckily, I am still at the point where I have more chapters with him in it than without, but time moves quickly. Chapters end and new ones begin, that is just how it is. 

Guys, our emotions are always with us tucked inside some box somewhere, and that box may not always be fully shut. I hate that I almost cried in a movie theater, but my life can be overwhelming at times. Some days, it is so much of a fight to choose to move forward and be happy. Survivors of loss are fighters and always manage to pick themselves off the ground, no matter how difficult. At the end of the day, there simply is no other option.