After loss: the way healing feels

Dad, me and a coupla sibs

I talked to a good friend recently who asked me how I come up with blog ideas every week or so. 

I explained to him that I spend a little time each week thinking about a thing that meant something to me about life, people, loss, love, etc. Something that would likely be universal, because I don't notice magical things, I just notice important things. 

And sometimes a single event can teach you something about all of those things – people, life, loss, love – at once. 

My father's death has been that event. 

When he passed away two months ago, I experienced what other people call "the hole" of  loss i.e., the feeling that life would not ever feel as it did when the lost person was in it. Even the parts of my life that my dad never really understood  would not be the same.

The old normal was gone.

I've dreamed about, planned, and carried out plenty of changes in my life and so the feeling that my life had changed, was changing every day without my permission, was alarming. The feeling of loss had affected everything from my thoughts while cooking, to my happiness over an accepted piece, to my ability to look forward to the future the way I always had.  

I wasn't really aware until now that I am a person who carries a visual of the future more than an idea. It's a sprawling, changing Monet of possibilities – seeing all my children build lives they love, imagining the publishing dreams that excite and inspire me, and who knows, maybe a life near water someday.

A month or so after my dad died, trying to pull up that view  was like trying to inflate a pool toy with a hidden hole. It would only puff up so much before refusing to do more. My visual was a sunless sky that didn't know whether to clear or rain or what, other than remain on duty until the night sky arrived to relieve it.

The drive to get "back to normal" was powerful, and the muscle memory of familiar life made it easy to head  that way. In the hazy days after losing Dad, I wanted to live on auto-pilot, and allow my mind to deal with the air pockets of grief, and nothing else.

I yielded to this. Tried, tried, tried in that before place to do what I've always done – get up, go to work, talk on the phone, read texts, attend meetings, have dinner – while the feeling of "before" remained, ever so slightly, beyond reach.

This is the "hole," people talk about, the life that looks, after loss, exactly as it did before, but feels expired, hollow, a place where you once lived but don't anymore.

It was opening my calendar like I do every morning but remembering that I didn't have to schedule a visit to the Memory Care unit. It was driving past the restaurant where we used to eat lunch like I often do, but not thinking it's been too long since the last one. It was driving past his street like I do every day, but not wondering if it was too late or early for a visit.

I thought about that hole, and about how I was trying to fill it by carrying out normal habits and trying not to lose it when I saw someone who looked like my dad. 

I began to wonder if maintaining a normal, unchanged life might be making that hole even bigger with all those glimpses at what wasn't  there anymore.

I discovered something wonderful.

It would never be a process of teasing out the reminders.  But it could be, step by step, a process of shrinking the prominence of this person's absence by changing the context of their presence.  

I decided to change my normal life, one tiny habit at a time.

I changed the music I listen to.

I changed the way I eat.

I started dressing a little differently. 

I changed the kind of writing I do and my targets.

And how I spend money

And how much I sleep

And who I want to see more of 

And what dreams my husband and I can share of a life we might love in a new place.

Few of these things have anything to do with my dad's absence. Most had little to do with his presence. I miss my dad still, to the point of tears. But I embrace memories now, and wait for the spiritual lift that comes after I've wished for his take on a problem or struggle.

"So Dad..."

There is a hole, but there is a new Monet coming together, too. I'm making something about every day different, healthy and new. I am again connecting to the future with joy and imagination and I am realizing that the past has done all it was supposed to do, which includes the gift of knowing my dad, getting his take on things, making him laugh. 

I hope if you're in this place, you find the same picture of new things to come, new places to be, and if the absence of your loved one is painful at times,  I hope their spiritual presence will become a perfect piece of furniture in your new home of "after."

This post is dedicated with love to Teri and Dana