A year and a half ago, a few days before Christmas, my father died. It was awful. It is awful. I struggle with that loss. Maybe this isn’t the greatest way to start this post? Oh, well! Onward. In my book One of the Guys, Toni Valentine’s father has died and she too struggles with it. It sucks.
Death tends to force reflection and lesson-learning, so here are a few observations about grief and death and horrible stuff like that:
- Happy moments feel sad. Yep. This is a thing. As my kids grow, I often think, “Man, my dad’s missing this.” There I am, in the middle of a July 4th celebration, sun bright, sprinkler on, laughter all around me, feeling sad. Gross, right? It’s okay though. The sadness mixes with the happy stuff; it doesn’t overwrite it. Eventually I think we all get to a point where sadness tries to slither into everything because we’ve lost something, tinting moments with her blue shade, and we learn to accept her presence and even say, “Fine. Come on in, Sadness. It’s a beautiful day today. Have a seat. Be quiet. I want to hear the laughter.”
- No one knows what to say…that’s okay. Yeah, we don’t know what to say. It’s weird, right? Shouldn’t we have that figured out by now? Death isn’t, like, new. What do you say to someone when they’ve experienced huge and awful loss? The reason we don’t know what to say or do is because there’s nothing we can say or do that will make it better. We’ve got to sit in the pain. Personally, I felt like acknowledgement was enough. Like, don’t pretend it didn’t happen, don’t avoid it, don’t pretend everything’s fine. Don’t act like someone should get it over it, no matter how much time has passed. I mean, it would be cool if there was a magic spell to make it feel better. One word, one flick of the wand, something. There isn’t. Acknowledgement is the best thing — for me. It could be different for someone else, but I like a simple, “I see your pain. I’m sorry.”
- My dad will miss my next book. I’ve been working on a new book for some time now and when I’m finished (I think I can, I think I can) he’s going to miss it. This sucks. I hate it.
- Life goes on, but nothing remains the same, including you. Death changes the living, you know. Sigh.
There you go, folks! A super duper happy-go-lucky post for the summer! I think it’s important to remember that even during these bright summer days, don’t feel ashamed if you have Sadness inviting herself over, for whatever reason, as long as she doesn’t overwrite all the good stuff…because the good stuff, it’s still there, bobbing to the surface, always.
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