When I was 21 I lost my dad. He was taking the trash out to the street one day, slipped on some ice, hit his head, and was declared braindead two days later. I’m one of five siblings. Second youngest. I remember feeling sorry for my younger brother. I had the thought “at least I made it to 21 before I lost dad.” You know, that arbitrary mile marker we have for adulthood. I made it. Thank goodness.
While there is a difference between mine and my younger brother’s journey, and he had difficulties I didn’t, what I’ve realized is you always need a dad. No matter the age. There’s so much to discover about the world, about yourself, about being a good man, about handling new responsibility with grace, about dealing with growing old, about self confidence, about being open to the new.
Of course it’s possible to learn all of these things without Dad, it’s just more lonely. It’s like if you were a kid, and someone threw a workbook at you and told you to figure it out vs. having a tutor. There’s information in both, but in one there’s a relationship. There’s intuition, there's give and take. One is warm, the other is cold.
And so in my sixth year of being fatherless I think that is the title of the latest wave of grief. How do I not become cold without you? Of course there are new relationships to forge that will fill in, of course I have my family and my mother. They are not insufficient in any way.
But when you grow up with someone you love, your brain makes a place for them. You lean on them, you count on them, and when they’re taken away, your instincts can’t let go of them. Your reflex is to go to them, but that place in your brain is empty. It’s frozen, preserved exactly the way it was the day they died.
So that’s rough. I am blessed with good friends who cheerfully discover life along side me, kind families who invite me into their circle, and a mother who overflows with a tender love. So really there’s hope and opportunity every day and this is the easiest grief to deal with yet, but it’s grief all the same.
-James
