One Year

Earlier this month marked one year since we lost my dad.  It feels cliché to say, but I can’t believe it’s been a year and I can’t believe it’s only been a year.  I knew it was true at the time, and the process of grieving him his past 365 days has only confirmed it, but thus far in my thirty-one years my dad’s death is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

In the months leading up to this milestone we struggled with what to do.  How do you mark the first anniversary of the worst day of your life?  In the end we decided to bury him.  There wasn’t really time to make the “what to do with dad’s remains” decision when he died, so we didn’t.  But over the course of the past year we’ve realized it might be nice to have a place to go.  A place for him that is not the back corner of my mom’s closet.  So we decided on a burial plot and purchased a gravestone. 

And on the first anniversary we held a small service, attended by us, my mom and siblings, and many of the people that have walked alongside us this year.  The people who have gotten us through.  Afterwards we went to my mom’s house for chili and gumbo, scotch and Guinness. 

As we pieced together what that day would look like I couldn’t help but think about the day of his funeral.  On that day we’d had a large service in the morning and then invited everyone back to my mom’s house for food, scotch and Guinness.  The day of the funeral is mostly a wild blur, but I remember the raw feeling of grief.  The tears that sprang at a moment’s notice and the numb shock. 

In the weeks leading up to the first anniversary I worried I would feel just as I had on the day of his funeral.  Because those days shared a similar cadence I assumed the emotions would be the same too.

But, much to my surprise, things were different.  There was sadness to be sure.  Tears and that ache of what should be but is not.  But for most of the day I moved with an anticipation of feelings that did not come.  At one point I ran to Mariano’s grocery story for (another) last minute trip before the service.  As I moved up and down the aisles I couldn’t help but think about how it felt to be there immediately following his death.  I remembered how I found myself looking for him in the faces of the shoppers.  I remembered how I couldn’t walk through the international food aisles without crying.  I remembered how for some reason the grocery story had become a hard place to be in the weeks following my dad’s death.  I remembered all these things differently though.  Instead of reliving the memories, feeling the pain and sadness of that time a year ago, I remembered them slightly removed now, with only a vague sense of what it all felt like.

I continued to remember the emotions without the raw feeling throughout that day.  And I realized that time really did what everyone said it would do.  The 365 days of isolating grief I’d endured had a purpose.  Time started to softened the blow.  Time started to heal.  And that was good. 

Which of course carries it’s own set of baggage.  Because acknowledging that you are moving along brings forth guilt.  This is the thing that makes grief the biggest asshole I know.   You can’t make progress without then experiencing sadness about said progress.  

But the point of this story is that one year later time had done something.  My heart had healed a little.  I was a little further along down the road of grieving my dad than I’d thought.

In a ridiculous twist of irony I found myself waiting in a receiving line at the exact same funeral home on the exact same Friday evening of my father’s wake one year later.  A church friend of my husband passed away in a similar sudden fashion.  Like my dad, Robb had died younger than one would have expected and his loved ones, like us, were left reeling.  The receiving line at Robb’s wake wound all through the funeral parlor and we had to wait a while to see his loved ones.  The same thing had happened at my dad’s wake- the line extending all the way outside.  I’d never really appreciated before just what people went through to express their condolences to us.

Once we got to Robb’s widow and stepson I found myself fumbling for words.  I wanted so badly to express to them that I knew, I knew exactly what this felt like.  I knew how hard it was to receive people graciously and how your feet hurt from standing and you still really can’t believe this is happening, that this is what your life looks like right now.  And I wanted to tell that that I can honestly say, one year later, that time does start to do something.  But that I also know how much they probably don’t want to hear that.  I know I didn’t want to hear that when I stood in their place.  I wanted to say that this is the shittiest thing that will ever happen to you and it’s awful and more than once in the next 365 days you will feel like you’ve been hit by a truck.  It is the worst thing you will ever have to go through but you will get through it.  You will get to this day in November 2015 and it won’t feel the same.  And that will be hard too, but it won’t feel the same.  It’s awful, but it won’t kill you.  Grieving will affect every aspect of your life and you’ll hate it but you will get through it.  And it won’t always be as awful as it is right this moment. 

I didn’t say all that.  But I tried to say enough.  I tried to help them know that they were not alone in their pain even though it felt like it.  And as we left the funeral home I once again acknowledged that time had allowed me to remember the pain of this day one year ago without feeling it fresh.  Time had done something.  And that’s good.