Swimming in the Grief

...And How It's All Just So Weird

Grief is messy and uncomfortable. Writing about this experience has been cathartic yet challenging. Eventually, I’ll get back to regular programming about ways to heal and cope in this messy world. But for now, recording this experience here on Substack feels important to me. Feel free to skip if this content is not for you! :)

Sitting outside my Dad’s hospice room on the most beautiful day, not knowing it would end so soon.

The experience of losing a parent is surreal. It feels both far away and painfully close all at the same time. Does death ever feel real to us? Does it ever catch up to us and make us feel its impact? I am still waiting for it to land, to stop running from it; to wake up and catch my breath and finally believe it’s true.

When we were celebrating the end of my Dad’s life a few weeks ago, I did not want the funeral service to end. I wanted to stay on that pew, front and center for others to witness my pain and cry with me, to read my eulogy aloud over and over, to hear the preacher’s voice speaking the verses about how the Lord is my Shepherd, to hear my brother sing the hymn on repeat. I wanted to reach in and soothe my aching heart with the soft piano notes of “Down to the River to Pray.” I did not want this part to end because it felt like I was close to the truth, close to the grief of it all, where everyone was paying attention and listening and remembering the loss. It was a moment I knew everyone was mourning my Dad with me. I knew soon enough they would speak their condolences, eat their cheese straws and drink their punch and go home. They would strip themselves of their church clothes, strip themselves of their sorrow as if the funeral checked the box of grieving.

But yet - we are stuck. My Mom and sister and brother and I. We are in this grief - forever. We are deep in the underbelly of loss when time is suspended and the attachment is broken and the love of a father that only a father can give is no more. When you realize each morning when you wake up that he is gone and feel the gut punch of it all over again. The shattering of your heart. The weight on your chest. The tears welling and the holding back. There is an urgent need to feel it deeply and not forget.

I know I am only in the beginning of this grief - that the end of the service marked the beginning of this time of reconciling what is gone and what will change. There are moments in this journey when I want to pull on the sorrow and pain like a blanket, keep it close to every part of me, feel the heartache in my chest, bring the loss as close as I can, to let it drop into me so I can swim in it and be with it up close. Drown in it, let it overwhelm me with its gravity so I won’t forget him, so I won’t forget the burden of this loss.

And yet - I am running from it. I am running from this grief I say I want to drown myself in. I am working, and mothering, and partnering, and showing up for my friends. I am meal prepping and grocery shopping. I am burying my head in the sand so deep that it will be impossible to come up for air and feel the emptiness, the void.

Running with the dog like everything is fine as if there is not a giant hole in my heart now.

People ask how I am and I say I don’t know. My Dad died. He is gone. He could not outsmart the cancer. No more radiation or chemo pills or second opinions. But here I am - taking your child on a play date, making a to-do list, paying my taxes, and pretending like everything is fine. Grief is so weird. It is misunderstood and the way to navigate it is different with each loss. And gosh does it make others so uncomfortable.

I know there are no shoulds or supposed to’s in this long excursion into the depths of grief and longing. I know each day will feel different; I woke up today and felt good and then I felt bad for feeling good. And then a client shared about her own grief journey and my heart broke yet again for her and for me and for the journey we are on that will never end.

I am currently working my way through C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed. Last night I found this passage that resonated deeply.

I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit, fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the arrow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there’s an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many cul de sacs.

Thank you for being with me on this wild and bumpy road of grief and loss. If you have books, quotations, podcasts, substacks, etc that have helped you, I would love to know. I hope to write a post soon about the resources I have used to support me in this process.

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