70

When my dad turned 50 my mom threw him a big surprise party.  Our backyard was filled with all the people who loved him: United coworkers, neighborhood friends, family.  My sister and I had been the decoy.  My mom sent us to Target with him and told us to stall as long as we could.  It turns out this is an easy task for two tweens.  We puttered around, going up and down every aisle, eventually hanging out in the bathroom for an insanely long time while my poor dad waited outside, his blood pressure slowly rising.  By the time we left he was seething but it was the only time I was not phased by his anger.  We were doing this for the greater good.

And it was all worth it when he rounded the corner behind our house and saw all the people who’d gathered to celebrate this milestone.  They had a funny tee-shirt for him and all sorts of “over the hill” paraphernalia.  He made his way around our backyard, in his element, laughing and greeting all his people.  Later they would all pass around a basket collecting cash for the parking ticket my mom had incurred in the chaos of trying to get everything done for the party.  The party, as all my parents’ parties did, lasted well into the summer night.

Celebrating birthdays wasn’t a thing we did very well for my dad, so that’s probably why the 50th stands out.  I have no idea what we did for his 60th.  I was wrapping up my time in New York, a month away from getting married.  Did his birthday get lost that year, wrapped up as we were in wedding planning?  I’m sure my mom and siblings had a dinner at home for him like always, but that was probably it.  

The only other birthday I remember for my dad wasn’t an actual birthday, but the acknowledgement of one.  Shortly after my dad’s 63rd birthday he was gathered in our kitchen with his older brothers.  I watched them quietly raise a glass of whisky, toasting their father, who had died at 62.  As the youngest, my dad was now the last one to make it past that cursed age.  Now all three men had celebrated the birthday their father never got to see and there was a murmured recognition of this birthday’s significance for my dad and for them all.  

Sometimes I wonder if one day my siblings and I will gather in the weeks or months after my youngest brother turns 67 to acknowledge that we made it, that we all passed that milestone my dad never did.

Today would have been my dad’s 70th birthday.  As I type those words, tears flood my eyes.  I'm heavy today, anxious and burdened.  Seventy seems particularly significant and, for the first time in a while, I find myself grieving a little more bitterly than usual over this missed milestone. It makes me sad that he never got to see this age, that I will never know what my dad was like in his seventies.  For whatever reason that number, 70, feels more significant than the other three birthdays we’ve marked without him.  

I wonder what we would have done today.  It’s easy to say now, on this side of knowing how quickly and without warning a life can end, that we would have planned a big celebration, another backyard blowout, a cake with 70 candles, and “really over the hill” decorations everywhere.  In all likelihood though, we would have done what we always did: dinner at my mom’s, a simple toast to my dad, and a few gifts.  Either way this longing, this longing to be able to mark in some large or small way my dad entering into a new decade, making it of another year older, this longing is crushing today.

I hate that I don’t know what my dad would be like in his seventies.  I hate that I can’t throw him a big party today, or at least share a pint of Guinness with him.  I hate that he is forever stuck at age 66 while time keeps moving.  The sun will rise and set on June 9, 2017 but this day won’t be the day we want it to be.  Instead it’s a “would have been” day.  The day my dad would have turned 70 if he’d made it that far.  The day we would have celebrated him wildly.

I haven’t had a day like this in a while.  A day of bitter, hot tears and sharp pangs of longing.  I don’t know why this particular milestone feels so hard today but it does.  I’m sad.  And kinda pissed.  Much of the past three and a half years of grieving my dad has involved deep sadness over the loss of all the good he encompassed, sadness over the people who won’t know him, over the ways we no longer get to experience his love and care.  Today, if I’m being really honest, I’m mostly just mad that he didn’t get to be 70.  That we don’t get to celebrate this passage of time with him.  It’s shitty and it sucks.

And I know days like this give me a choice.  I can let my heart stay hard and bitter in it.  I can stay mad and shake my fist at God for not letting my dad at least make it to 70.  Or I can let it teach me and grow me.  I can use it as a reminder that we are not promised milestones forever so we should celebrate the ones that come with abandon.  

I have chosen the latter as often as I can, and I know I will continue to do so today.  But I will also let myself sit in the anger too.  I will let myself long for what “would have been”, even if I know that longing can never be met.  The only healthy way around days like these are through them, through the truth of what is hard to the hope of the good that can be found in hard things.

I will get my dad’s favorite burgers for lunch and maybe even down the fries with a Guinness.  I’ll be with my mom and my sister tonight.  We’ll imagine what celebrating my dad’s 70th birthday would have looked like and we’ll be sad that this particular story will never be told.  And tomorrow will be a new day.

Happy Birthday, Dad.  70 would have looked good on you.

Lessons in Autumn

I wrote this essay two years ago now, the first fall after my dad's death.  For a variety of reasons I never published it.  Each year, as the season start to to change I think back on this essay and the little scraps of hope that came with it.  Today I noticed for the first time that the leaves on the parkway of our street were starting to turn yellow and red and I thought now might be the right time to share a lesson I learned a few years ago.  

I’m not a fall person.  I’m a summer girl.  I love everything about it.  The flip flops, the sundresses, the warmth, the sun, the general happiness in the air.  If I could live in summer year round I would do in a heart beat.  I don’t really get people who need seasons.  I’d be perfectly happy in San Diego.  Except that all my people are in the Midwest.

And in the Midwest we have fall.  And people here love fall for some reason.  I don’t get it, but without fail the Tuesday after Labor day brings out The Autumns.  The Autumns love fall, love Pumpkin Spice Lattes and boots, and most of all love reveling in the end of summer because it means fall is coming. 

And I don’t get it.

Once at a dinner party one of The Autumns started on about his excitement for fall and I kind of lost it.  “How can you like fall????  Fall is death.  Everyone goes on and on about how beautiful fall is but all those leaves are changing colors because they are dying!  Fall is just one slow death!” 

Later, he confessed to me that all fall he couldn’t look at the beautiful trees without thinking about death.

I felt kind of bad about that one.  I mean, I pretty much ruined an entire season for him.  It was not my finest moment.

This year, on this side of death, I anticipated feeling extra scroogey towards fall.  I’ve lived in the thick of winter for close to a year now and I didn’t need all those leaves changing color and reminding me of dying.  I have enough reminders.

But something funny happened this year.  I don’t know if it was because we had a particularly beautiful fall, or if it was precisely because I am on this side of death, having experienced it so intimately this year, but I found myself marveling at the beauty of fall these past few months.  I couldn’t help myself.  I’d be out walking with the kids and a tree would literally take my breath away.  Drives around town were fraught with  beautiful colors and trees in full bloom.  

I felt guilty at first.  I tried to shove down this acknowledgement of fall’s beauty.  But it kept coming.  I couldn’t stop marveling.   There was something about those beautiful trees.  It was like death wasn’t going down without a fight.  Yes, the leaves were dying and falling away, but they were going to die beautifully, damnit.  They weren’t going quietly.  They weren’t about to leave without bringing a final bit of beauty into the world.

Which of course made me think of my dad’s death.  When I looked, I saw the beauty in it.  His death was traumatic and shocking and so very painful.  But there was beauty, damnit.  There was beauty in the community of people who showed up and loved us immediately after his death and continued to care for us throughout this year.  There was beauty in the way it knit us closer.  And there was so much beauty in the tributes made to my dad.  For weeks after his death people told his stories, the stories of his beautiful life, the things that they loved about him and the ways that he had lived a good story.  It was death that wasn’t going down without a fight.  The beauty of his life wasn’t going away untold. 

And it’s in our love for him.  Our love for him and the ways we carry him with us and try to keep him alive bears witness to this notion of death not going down without a fight.  We speak his name and tell his stories so that in his death, his life still blooms boldly.  His legacy and his love is so deeply embedded in our hearts that he will not die quietly.  There is beauty and color in remembering him and what was so wonderful about his life.

And so maybe I’m changing my mind about fall.  Maybe I’m finding some beauty in the dying.  Or rather I respect the beauty in the dying.  We all die right?  But our legacies, our life’s work.  That’s not going down without a fight, without a final bloom of beautiful.

Bad Heart.

Today would have been my dad's 68th birthday.  I thought about my dad even more than usual and drank a bit of Guinness with dinner to mark this day.  And here I wanted to share a few thoughts about the man that raised me.

In his favorite place: Ireland

My dad had a weak heart.   He was born with a heart condition, the name of which I can never remember, causing me to call my mom from my midwife’s office every time I am newly pregnant so she can remind me what it is that runs through my genes and could lead to trouble for the babe inside of me.  Hearts have plumbing systems and electrical systems, so to speak, and his condition had to do with his electrical system.  There was a hole, or something, and apparently it was a big deal.  My aunt said that when received word that her father, my grandfather, had passed away at first she assumed the call was about her nineteen year old brother, my dad, that the heart condition had finally taken him.  His weak heart wasn’t expected to last very long, I guess.  But you’d never know this from looking at him.

Part of why the details of my dad’s weak heart are so hazy is because I can only remember two times in my whole life when his condition ever came up.  Once he explained that he wasn’t allowed to do sports as a kid, on account of the weak heart, so that’s why he ended up participating in debate team and student council and the school plays.   Which was so like my dad, to turn lemons in to lemonade.  There wasn’t a hint of bitterness or longing when he recalled his inability to do what every other boy on the block was doing.  Just happiness over the opportunity that one closed door afforded.  The other time the weak heart came up was when he and my mom flew to Texas to see a doctor who specialized in my dad’s condition so he could fix the problem.  And he did.

My dad had a weak heart.

cheering on our team

My dad had a strong heart.  He lost his dad when he was a young man in college.  I thought about this a lot when I was in college, how much I still needed my dad at that time.  How did my dad finish learning to become a man while mourning the loss of the one who was supposed to teach him?  If it had been me I think I would have floundered for a few years in self-pity.  But not my dad.  He took his strong heart and started his career.  At age 20 he started working for the company he would retire with many years later.  And then his strong heart took care of his mom.  He played bridge with her friends and took her on trips with him. 

My dad had a strong heart.  He made strong-hearted decisions.  He followed a moral compass that led him to what was true and good.  His values and priorities lined up and his commitment to them caused him to live a life that made the lives of those around him better, not worse. 

My dad had a strong heart.

My dad had a bad heart.  When I was thirteen, awkward and gangly and in need of braces, my dad suffered his first heart attack at age forty-eight.  While his heart condition had to do with the electrical system of the heart, the heart attack was all plumbing and had nothing to do with his condition.  His arteries were clogged from too much smoking, too little exercise and a few too many trips through the drive through at his go-to lunch spot, Wendy’s.  He wasn’t extraordinarily obese and he’d certainly cut back his once two packs a day habit over the years, but it didn’t matter.  That bad heart got him. 

And I’ll never forget the sight of him in the hospital bed, so pale and weak, hooked up to machines that beeped and hummed.  Seeing us see him in this state was one of two times in my life I’d see him cry.  (The other, for the record, was when he dropped me off at University of Illinois for my freshmen year of college.)  It was the first time I think I realized my dad could die.  That this bad heart could get him in the end.  .

We all changed our lives for my dad’s bad heart.  Skim milk replaced 2%, bagels on Sunday morning instead of donuts (which was met with much weeping and gnashing of teeth).  We ate turkey burgers and oven roasted fries.  My dad joined a gym and went faithfully every morning.   But my dad had a bad heart and even though he made changes I don’t think he could every fully accept this fact.  He looked around and saw people drinking and smoking more, eating worse and working out less whose hearts could handle the abuse.  He didn’t want to accept that his bad heart couldn’t sustain it.  And so, less than twenty years after that first heart attack, his bad heart finally gave out.  Another heart attack took his life.

My dad had a bad heart.

But oh, my dad had such a good heart.  He loved so well.  Never once did I question the simple truth that my dad loved and accepted me.  He was decent and kind-hearted.  He welcomed and invited everyone who crossed his path.  People felt comfortable and accepted in his presence.  You couldn’t help but feel good about yourself with my dad.  He did that.  He made you feel like enough.

helping, always

My dad had a good heart.  He lived the life of a helper.  Letters of encouragement to friends in college, serving the community or those he worked with, my dad never seemed to turn down a chance to help someone.  I had to check with my mom first before asking him to help with the kids because he would tell me he could, even if he had work of his own to do.  He loved nothing more than to serve others (and of course spend time with his beloved grand children).

selfies with Monster

My dad had a good heart.  In the end his most defining feature was his kindness.  His big, good heart.  He loved us with that good, kind heart.  He loved my mom and my siblings and Tommy and my kids and I with everything in him.   We were the fortunate ones, the beneficiaries of his good heart. 

My dad had a weak heart, a bad heart.  My dad had a strong heart, a good heart.  I wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world.

Dublin Dreaming

photo source

During my junior year of college I studied abroad in Ireland.  Dublin to be exact.  I am the daughter of a man who traveled to Ireland at least a hundred times.  I’m not really exaggerating here either.  My father would go there every chance he got, and as an United Airlines employee who enjoyed free airfare, he got a lot of chances. 

All of my friends were planning on studying abroad so in the fall of our junior year we started mapping our adventures.  Sarah would be studying in Nottingham, Whit in Paris.  Shan and Mal went to Barcelona, Afeld to Madrid.  I waffled between Italy and Dublin ultimately choosing my Irish roots because I didn’t want to have to deal with learning a foreign language.  And because Guinness.  Then I found out I could study acting for a semester even though it wasn’t my major and I was sold.  For four whole months I could pretend to be the theater major I always dreamed of.  And I could do it in Ireland with cute Irish boys with cute Irish accents.  Really, what more did I need?

photo source

I’ve found myself thinking a lot about this semester abroad recently.  Our friends Mary and Niall came over for dinner one night last fall.  Niall is Irish, born and raised outside of Dublin.  Naturally the semester abroad photo album had to be busted out.  We flipped through the pages, Niall knowing just about every spot with very few clues in the details of the picture.  It had been a while since I perused the pages of this scrapbook.

photo source

 I can’t think about Dublin without remembering the buskers, street musicians that played up and down Grafton street, and the very distinct child buskers who sang in whiny, high pitched voices all sounding the same.  They must have been trained somewhere together.  I can’t think about Dublin without remembering the huge stack of books I read while I was there.  After coming off a tremendously busy season before study abroad, having the time to read and read and read felt amazing.

photo source

I remember the feeling of living in a city, the ways it rejuvenated me every morning, stirring something deep in my bones.  I remember dark pubs that turned into weird nightclubs after a certain hour and an Irish boy named Tommy who tried to kiss me in one.  I panicked and put my hand in front of his mouth.  I’m not known for my smooth moves.

I can picture the pubs and coffee shops where I studied and read.  The department store I bought the one pair of black stretchy pants I would wear daily for the next four months having not known to pack black “movement” clothes for theater classes.  I can hear the Irish music radiating from Oliver St. John Goagarty’s and smell the cigarette smoke that thickly filled that pub on that last day before the no cigarette ban went into effect at midnight.  My mind wanders down the path to the Tesco where we bought our groceries, mine an assortment of peanut butter, rice cakes, green peppers and nutella.  Always nutella.

There are so many smells and sounds and images that Ireland conjures up.  Beyond that, the greatest thing it invokes is a feeling.  It’s a feeling of excitement and happiness, energy and endless possibility.  Studying abroad was four months of endless possibility.  Paris for the weekend?  Sure!  Guinness for breakfast?  Absolutely!  Every week held a new adventure and when studying is done in a century old pub off of Grafton Street, even studying is an awesome endeavor.

It is sometimes frustrating, in this season of small kids, and cheerios and endless monotony, how far from my study abroad experience life has taken me.  I wish I could go back and do it again.  They don’t tell you, when you’re in it, how once-in-a-lifetime this experience is.  Or maybe they do and you’re just too young and foolish to understand.

photo source

I know I’ll be back.  It’s top of my bucket list to run the Dublin marathon and show Tommy (my husband, not the poor Irish lad I rejected) the place that holds a piece of my heart.  And my siblings and I hope to some day take a portion of my father’s remains there, certain he would want a piece of him to reside in his favorite place on earth.  In the meantime I’ll just stare longingly at the pictures in the InstaIreland instagram feed and remind myself that there’s still time.  And maybe Monster or Toots or Red will choose to study there in twenty years.  In which case I better start saving now for the airfare to visit them…

Pictures courtesy of the InstaIreland instagram feed, my newest obsession.  Check it out.

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. 

on birth and death and when they're connected...

At my dad’s wake my aunt shared a story of my father from his toddlerhood.  As a small child, she said, my dad would play quietly in his crib in the early hours of morning as he awaited his release into the day.  My aunt said my father could be heard at this time saying to himself, “what should I be happy about today?”

It is a fitting story of my dad.  He was always pretty happy.  And it always seemed to bother him when we weren’t happy.  It drove me nuts in my teenage angsty years, the way my dad would implore me to “be happy” when my latest crush/friend/school/rejection drama left me feeling anything but.  My dad though, was pretty much always happy.  I think sixty some odd years after he asked himself that question in his crib he was still finding ways to wonder what he could be happy about each day.

I think of this story almost every time I put Red down for a nap or to bed.  I wonder if she will be like my dad in this way?  If some morning I will hear her pondering what to be happy about that day.

Because I was very newly pregnant when my dad died I think we all hoped Red would fill the void he left.  My mom and I were both convinced she was going to be a boy, I think in hopes that somehow he would be reincarnated in her.  On her journey earthside my dad must have kissed her in someway, her red hair bearing witness to him.  But is that all?  Will I see other similarities?

When she was first born I worried about her.  I worried that because she grew so close to such a broken heart for so many months she would enter the world broken-hearted, filled with an inherited sadness.  And when I lay her down on her polka dotted bedding, thinking of the story of my dad in his own crib, I still worry.

I worry she will know how hard it was to grow her.  How I despaired comments about my growing belly and reminders of the passing weeks of pregnancy.  Her growth was a physical sign that we were all moving away from my dad, moving away from a life that included him.  Her entrance into the world would be a reminder of his absence.

I worry she will bear the weight of his legacy.  That we will all try to convince ourselves she is like him because she came when he left.  And she will wear that legacy like a heavy, ill-fitting coat.  Unhappy about playing the role of someone she never even knew.

Red’s life feels so connected to my father’s death.  It was such a strange, hard season, growing new life, while viscerally mourning the end of one.  Everything was upside down, topsy turvy and impossibly hard.

I wonder what it will feel like when I look back on this season five, ten, twenty years down the road.  Will time have a way of softening reality?  Will my fears about the effect of my grief on her come to fruition?  Will my memories of her first months be so tempered by mourning?  Or will I look back and only remember what was happy and light?

Probably yes to all.  Or something completely different.  I haven’t lived through enough hardship to know what time does to these things.

I hope I see glimpses of my dad in Red in the same way I hope to see it in Toots and Monster.  Not because they replace him but because he was incredible and his characteristics worth inheriting.    And I pray that time will separate these two events, his death and her birth, so that some day they won’t seem quite so entwined.  So that some day they will stand alone with only the happier threads connecting them.

On Holding the Happy and the Sad- My Messy Beautiful

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!  I LOVE Carry on Warrior.  I keep ordering more copies for myself because I keep giving them away to my friends.  If you haven't read it yet- do.  Please.  She says it all better than I ever could :)

We bought a house last month.  If my dad were alive there would have been champagne popping and celebratory hugs.  Instead there were tears and panicked phone calls to my friends for reassurance that moving forward was permissible.  We moved our family of four into my parents’ home 12 months ago, expecting our stay to be a year, tops, while we got Monster into his school and through surgery then found a home of our own.  We moved in whole and intact and then 7 months into this new living arrangement my dad died and nothing was as it should be.

Once I swam through the swamp thick waters of hard feelings about our new house I was able to tread in clearer, stiller waters of excitement about this house that will become our home.  It has character and charm and an openness that is begging to be filled with our people.  When I let myself get there, I was excited, happy, and grateful for our new home. 

But buying a new house means not living with my mom anymore.  When we moved in a year ago my dad helped direct the movers and every morning he drove Tommy to the train station on his way to the gym, then rushed home early to help get the kids breakfast.  It’s where the four of us, my mom and dad, Tommy and I would sit down with a glass of wine after the kids were down and watch episode after episode of The West Wing.  And then it was where we rushed home to the night we got the call that my dad died.  Where we woke up, morning after morning, overwhelmed by grief.  It’s where we’ve been with my mom, watching helplessly as she has struggled to learn what life looks like without her other half.  Where my sister has come home to every weekend.  It’s where we’ve been as we’ve grieved the loss of my dad together, so that we wouldn’t do it alone.

And so the sadness of leaving here, of moving forward taints the happiness of leaving here, of moving forward.  Sometimes the sadness distorts the happy altogether. 

Over the coming weeks we will welcome a baby into this world.  Our third.  And yet all I can think about is what it will feel like without my dad.  Will it be more bitter than sweet?  More tears than joy?

The list of these types of occasions goes on and on- occasions we always assumed my dad would be present for.  Will sadness over his absence eclipse all the happiness in these moments?  I worry about my sister’s wedding day, my brother’s graduation from art school, the day my youngest brother gets his first real job.  When you lose a parent so young the greatest heartache seems to surround all the future happy events.  Can they still be happy without a key player?  Can I hold happy and sad together?

I’ve been fumbling, carrying these opposing emotions for months as the pain has eclipsed the joy, tainting it beyond recognition at times.  And I long for the carefree days before my loss when happy didn’t also contain a bit of sad.

Maybe I’m longing for something that can’t be.  I don’t know if any of us who want to live fully present and wholeheartedly in our lives can expect to not have to hold joy and pain simultaneously.  My messy beautiful is learning to hold the happy and the sad together in my heart. 

I’m learning that holding these opposing emotions together may be the necessary work of growing up and living with my whole heart.

Because life is not getting any easier.  When I look at my friends, all of us in our thirties now for the most part, I see that life is getting harder, heavier, sometimes sadder.  Our 20’s were all about the happy.  Weddings and fun trips, disposable income and babies and lots of showers to celebrate all the happy.  As we approached our 30’s I noticed a shift.  Suddenly we found ourselves facing the scary stuff.  Spouses had health scares, mortgages and bills added pressure, marriages went through significant battles, we lost babies and jobs, our kids got diagnoses and our parents died.  I can’t tell you how many friends waged difficult seasons in the last few years.  Time and again I listened to friends nostalgically wish for the ease and happiness of our twenties, watched as they worked to find ways to bring lightness to their world.

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I’m accepting the truth of Ann Voskamp’s words above more and more these days.  If I want to live fully, presently, and whole-heartedly in this messy beautiful world God created I have to learn to live in both dynamics.  Maybe the holiness is being able to coexist with them both, not just to tolerate the pain but to embrace it, to let it make you fully human.   Maybe the sad doesn’t just taint the happy.  Maybe the happy also seeps into the sad.

I want a life that sadness doesn’t touch, I want happy to just be happy.  For most of my life until now, that’s been pretty realistic.  I’ve had hard things, but never a loss like this.  Never something that felt so permanent.  The last five months have taught me that life is hard.  Life is messy and darkness can sometimes abound.  But it is oh so beautiful too.  If I don’t learn to hold the messy with the beautiful I’ll never see the beautiful.  But I think too, that the messy enhances the beautiful.  The sad is real and true and in some ways beautiful in it’s own messy right.  I could write thousands more words on the ways that my grieving has opened me up to deeper relationships and more honesty and vulnerability.  There is value in the sadness; it's not just something to endure.   

Holding both the sad and the happy keeps me from going numb.  Keeps the happy from feeling fake.  It’s a hard won happy, the kind that coexists with sad.  But I’m learning that it may just be the best kind.

Small Moments

We are eight days into the New Year, but today feels like it’s finally, officially the New Year.  That’s because today is the first day of being “back into the routine.”  Thanks to some sort of crazy polar vortex that sent temperatures well below zero we were the lucky recipients of two extra days of winter break.  Two days where it was too cold to leave the house.  Basically two days of insanity inducing cooped up-ness. 

I was ready to get back into our routine after over two weeks home.  It was fun having Monster around and Toots more than anyone enjoyed having a buddy during the day.  But the holidays were hard and we had a lot of time to just be home missing my dad.  This grieving process is long and difficult and, like most of the truest, deepest life experiences, not straightforward.  It involves a lot of cycling back through emotions you thought you’d overcome, feelings you want to be done with.  These last two and a half weeks were no exception.

Last January I decided to forgo typical resolutions and instead try to center my year on one word, one idea to focus my intention for the year.  In 2013 I tried to abide.  Some days I was better at it than others.

This year I honestly wasn’t really thinking about anything, “one word” wise.  But as 2013 drew to a close and fresh snow ushered in 2014 I heard my “word” clearly and knew there was no denying it.  I read a letter my sweet cousin wrote to my mom about my dad and knew that this year I needed to focus on the idea of “small moments.”

The untimely death of my beloved dad has taught me a lot, much of which I’m still processing and working through.  One lesson immediately obvious in the weeks following his passing has been the idea of “small moments.”

After my dad died so many people shared stories with us about him.  Through notes, emails, cards and in person people said the most wonderful things about my dad.  I learned so much about him after his death.  These were character traits that I’d always known about the man who raised me, but their stories and illustrations brought him to life in a whole new way.  Over and over again people told us of how my dad had helped them, shared kindness or provided comfort in simple, everyday moments.  When people remembered my dad they didn’t talk about the big things he accomplished or any of the “life highlights” he experienced that look good on paper.  Instead they talked about how my dad had helped them out one time, or made them feel better in small, everyday moments.  One old friend shared about how my dad had written him a comforting letter in college when he was homesick and lonely.  Another shared about how my dad comforted her so kindly after her mom caught her with cigarettes in her purse.  He told her everything would be ok and gave her a hug.  People remembered times he greeted them so warmly, treated them so hospitably, made them feel like they were the most important person in the room.

The things about my dad that really stuck with people were moments that I doubt he even really remembered.  Paying attention to others, treating them well, taking time to send that letter, listen to that story, or give that hug were just a part of how he lived day to day.  And yet this was what defined him.  This is why people mourned his death and loved him so well. 

There are the big things we do, the moments we think will define us, the actions we do with a lot of thought and attention because we think that it will be our mark on the world.  But what I’ve discovered in my dad’s passing is that it is the small moments, the daily acts of kindness that we often don’t think twice about that stick with others.  That is what defines our legacy.  My dad lived in those small moments well, so effortlessly and naturally.  In 2014 I want to practice living as my dad did.  I want to pay attention to the small moments and live them well, aware of others and their needs more than my own.

I can get too caught up in the big picture.  What will my career look like?  How can I achieve my big dreams?  When I think about my legacy I often think about the things that will look good on paper, the successes and achievements that are “brag worthy.”  I want to shift that this year.  I want to leave a legacy of small moments of kindness and love.  I want to remain aware of others always and stay present in each and every ordinary, mundane, regular encounter with others.  In 2014 I don’t want to let any opportunities to help, lift up, comfort or love others in the small moments pass by untended.   

And so that is my (two) word(s) for 2014: small moments.

Denial and Anger and Other Stages of Grief I'm Not Ready to Deal With

Denial and anger are two of the first stages of grief.  I understand these emotions more than I could have possibly imagined.  I seem to vacillate between the two in these weeks following my dad’s death, continually moving back and forth between disbelief and rage.

Denial is a strange one.  I think I understand why it’s necessary to process death though.  I don’t know that our brains can fully comprehend the idea that someone is here one day and simply gone the next.  I’m not sure we would be able to allow another person to immerse themselves in our day to day lives so fully, depend on them so completely if we really understood that in a moment they could be gone.  And so when that very thing happens you must function with a certain amount of denial, believing the person to just be on a long trip or out to pick up coffee.  You do this until you can get used to life without them.

It’s funny, even though I saw the death certificate with my own eyes, hugged his hard, decidedly un-lifelike body at the wake, even hid the box of his remains after his cremation from my mom, I still have this strange little hope that I’ll come home one day and see him reading the paper at the table.  Or that he’ll come walking through the front door, explaining it was all a misunderstanding.  Or even that I’ll run into him at Mariano’s where he’ll marvel at what an amazing grocery store it is.  Even if I never see him again there’s a part of me that thinks he’s out there somewhere else in the world, alive still and blessing the world with his Irish eyes, just not able to be with us anymore.  I understand why people find comfort in reincarnation now.  I understand a lot of things I never used to. 

Before all this I thought that it would be the worst to have a loved one missing, their whereabouts and status unknown.  It seemed like torture to wonder year after year if they’d come home, to hope day after day that this would be the one on which they’d walk through the door.  It seemed easier, to me, to know for sure that they were gone than to be stuck in that endless cycle of mostly false hope, unable to move on with your life.  Now, I would give anything for a shred of hope that my dad would one day walk through that door again.

Anger bubbles beneath the surface and I never know when it will lash out inappropriately.  I yell at Toots for changing her mind about milk or water when really I want to yell at God for writing this part of my story.  Hard to open packages infuriate me and when my kids and I all got sick two weeks ago and no one slept I literally pounded on a wall at 2 am and considered taking a carton of eggs outside in the middle of the night so I could throw something that would break. 

I’m afraid of getting stuck in these stages, trapped between anger and denial.  I don’t want to become a person who lives only in states of fury or disassociation from reality.

I find myself running through a list of reasons of why this is still so hard.  I defend myself not being able to interact normally when the subject of my dad comes up or make it through the day without crying.  We’ve been living with him for seven months.  That was seven months in which he had become an indispensible part of my every day life.  He was so young; we were still so dependent on him, all of us.  It was so sudden; we didn’t have time to prepare.  He was just so good.  There really aren’t enough words to encapsulate all the wonderfulness that is now simply gone.  And maybe these are all significant reasons for why this still feels almost as hard as it did three weeks ago.  Or maybe death is just this hard.

I understand that acceptance is the final stage of grief in as much as I understand that I have not reached acceptance.  It almost feels as though my whole being fights against acceptance these days.  I think about how my mom will have to attend weddings alone from now on or how he’ll never take Toots to the park or build a Brio train for Monster and something deep within fires up, actively pushing this truth away.  My lack of acceptance may just be the truest thing about all of this right now.