Become a Fan!
Follow HelloGrief
Our Videos
Since my dad died 18 months ago, I’ve come to realize that when someone you love dies, you don’t just have to say goodbye to him at the time he passes away but also at every crossroad. I’ve discovered that there are endless firsts and tough moments to get through, not just obvious ones like holidays and big events, but many others that are equally if not more challenging to struggle through under the heavy blanket of grief.
As children, we look forward to firsts – the first day of school, the first time to ride a bike without training wheels, the first time to go on a date, the first time to drive a car. Firsts seem happy and are something we treasure. But, somewhere along the line, we suffer a loss, and we have to adjust. And then the firsts that come can bring about a sadness that is hard to shake.
And so as we travel through the forest of firsts and other challenging moments in the midst of our shock and our sadness, we are forced to let go, one finger at a time. For me, the milestones have been hard, but some of the most difficult things to get past so far for me have been the ones I didn’t see coming.
Topping the list are The Flashback Moments. The first time I went to visit someone in the hospital after leaving the one with my dad and knowing he wouldn’t be coming back. In the elevator when I was visiting my friend that day, I almost had a panic attack when the flashback hit, and the unexpected flood of emotions that swept through me was shockingly debilitating.
When I hear about someone having a baby, I flash back to when Dad was happily rocking my newborn daughter in the rocking chair when she was just a few days old and I heard him singing to her and having a one-sided conversation with her.
There was also the first time I went to a funeral after I’d buried my own father and the first time I realized I was in the exact place I was when I found out Dad was sick. There are the flashback from every time I hear someone say “Howdy!” just the way Dad used to greet people in passing, and from when I hear a song that he used to sing and know the only way I will ever hear his beautiful voice again is in my dreams. The toughest of these Flashback Moments so far, though, was walking into my parents’ house the first time I’d been there after he wasn’t. During all of these times, my mind is pulled back to another time. Sometimes it is to a happy, healthy time, but more often it’s to darker days that let me know I am still heavily in the midst of grieving.
And then there are The Stinging Moments, those that rub salt into my wounds. The times when I am watching TV and the story line is one in which a character is dying or has cancer. When I close my eyes to go to sleep at night and all I can picture is the image of my dad’s frailty at the end. The times when I’m searching for a contact on my phone or in my email and his name automatically pops up. That happened just now, when I typed the number 18 in the first sentence of this post. The time I checked my calendar just a couple of weeks after Dad’s passing and I saw my notes about the trip to the Brain Tumor Clinic at Duke that we were supposed to be taking that week. Those are the times I keep forgetting to expect, the ones that leave me with a just-slapped feeling that I’m not sure will ever go away.
Probably the most frequently occurring difficult times for me since Dad went on ahead have been The Empty Chair Moments, the ones in which I am startled again by his absence. I think about him many times each day, I fall asleep with tears on my pillow almost every night, and I talk to him in the car pretty often – so that part of missing him has become part of my routine these days. But family vacations and holiday gatherings are so tough without him. I keep thinking about how he would’ve loved the things that we are all able to do, the ones that he now isn’t here to do … going the beach, riding a roller coaster, playing with the kids, listening to the conversations and the laughter. All of those moments together that feel so great except for the fact that he’s missing.
The first time I went on a run after my dad died, I got about a mile from my house and the tears started; being out there on the road by myself, away from any distractions and so aware of the empty space beside me, was tough, and I didn’t see that coming. It wasn’t that I never ran without him before; it was that this time I was running and I was so acutely aware of the fact that he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. He wouldn’t be again.
At my daughter’s high school graduation last spring, I felt the love, the excitement, the joy, and the pride more than anything else. I actually got through it without a tear, but what happened later that night was even harder than I’d thought the ceremony would be. We had made a dinner reservation for nine; however, when we got to the restaurant, the table was set for ten. I don’t think anyone else except me noticed, but the chair that stood empty after we’d all taken our seats seemed to me like such a glaring physical sign of the very important person who should have been right there.
The first time we gathered for a family photo with one less, and every time since, we can all feel Dad’s absence so strongly – it feels like the reverse of a Where’s Waldo photo. The first time I did something that I knew he would be proud of and I had to feel his pride in my heart because I couldn’t hear it in his voice or see it in his eyes. The times when I need to ask him a question and he isn’t here to give the answer that only he knew. Ouch.
Also making the list are the surreal Not-Supposed-To Times when I have to do something that I shouldn’t have to be doing – like when I visit his grave, like when we had to clean out his car to sell it, and every time I hear my voice telling someone that my father passed away.
Closely related are The Stand-in Moments when I am having to do things my dad should’ve been here to do – to worry about my mom, to tell his grandchildren that he is proud of them, to give my mom and my sisters the advice that I think he would be giving were he still here.
And finally, there are The Obscure Moments, those unique to him and perhaps even imperceptible to others who didn’t know him in the exact way I did: the first summer Olympics, the times when I think of something I know he would think is funny or interesting and I realize that I can’t share it with him.
When we took my daughter to visit the college she will attend this fall, I felt Dad’s absence so acutely. Dad was so good at meeting people, and I know he would have loved to be there to help her meet people and acclimate to the new surroundings. On the night of my daughter’s prom, just a few months after my dad died, the kids and their parents all gathered at a park before the big event for a photo shoot, and grief descended upon me like dew falling at night. It was the first big event involving my kids that we had to get through without Dad being around to know about it, to see the pictures, to hear about how much fun she had.
Even the minor everyday times can come in intermittent blasts, like when I eat an apple and catch myself thinking I should just go ahead and eat the core too (“It saves time!” he used to say.) These things leave me with an aching in my heart because he enjoyed them so thoroughly and now he can’t. But at the same time, somehow those memories bring a smile to my face as I remember how unique a person my dad was, and how his perspective and his “don’t sweat the small stuff” attitude are something I will carry with me forever.
With all of these unexpected moments, I am left to wonder: Does it get easier when these firsts happen again as seconds, and then thirds, and then so on? Do the shock and the pain lessen as the time when he was here gets further and further out, like a balloon floating in the sky?
What has your experience taught you? What words can you share here with others who face these firsts?
Special thanks to Stephanie Bullard Lancaster for sharing this piece with us. You can read more of her work on her blog.
18 Comments:
What a beautifully moving and thoughtful post! Thank you, Stephanie, for sharing your story. My father died very recently (not even two weeks ago) from complications related to his advanced lung cancer. So I’m aware, or think I am, that I haven’t even scratched the “grief surface” yet. It’s far too early for me to offer advice or any firsts, but I’m taking advice wherever I can get it. I am sorry for your loss, but please know that your post surely is helping others as it has helped me.
God… that shook my foundations.
It really is a moving post. I lost my father three months, 21 days and 14 hours ago, to the complications of an advanced osteosarcoma in the ear. It was exactly five weeks before my 14th birthday. I am still trying to keep breathing, to cling to whatever shred of joy there is left, to calm myself at times I feel not worth the oxygen. I am hopelessly thankful to you for sharing the post. It all seems so recognizable to me, this waterfall of memories you’re being exposed to, at most peculiar moments – I think grief and solace are two lotes from the same tree; separate yet intermingled, to the point that one cannot distinguish either anymore.
- Amersfoort, the Netherlands, 23rd of October 2012
Thank you…until you hear someone else’s story you feel your all alone. I lost my 2yr old son and 7yr old nephew almost 5months..on the 30th it will be 5months. We were camping and a horric storm came out of no where and a tree snapped 50ft up and fell on our tent. Coming home the first time without my Matthew seeing his stuff as he left it, was gut wrecthing. Watching my 6yr old son get used to his baby brother and cousin not being around to play is heart stopping. Seeing my 16yr old daughter trying to process the loss there are no words. I feel these firsts and I cope to get thru them. Now with the holidays approaching I pray we get them. And honestly I dread all these firts that have yet to come.
I write after losing my father very abruptly ten years ago. I was 19. I got an instant message from him “Have a great day, Beauty” and that afternoon I found out he had had a heart attack while driving home and didn’t make it.
The only thing I will say is that it never does go away. I graduated from the law school he had also attended. I passed the bar exam he had passed. My sister has had two children. I have moved cross country.
It starts to just feel bizarre when I count the moments that he is missing… and realize that ten years of life have gone by without him.
As I become an adult (cough*), the hardest times are when I think about the advice I’m not getting from him. I think about the fact that if he were alive, he would be my biggest fan and most trusted advisor. The tears still come. The milestones are still missing something foundational.
The thing that does happen, though, as time passes, is that you begin to realize that life continues. There is a strange comfort in that.
You realize that a father has children in order for his legacy to continue – and instead of thinking about his absence, you begin to live for him. You run because he cant. You tell the new generations anecdotes so that his memory never goes away. You always remember, and you live with his legacy. With your purpose to continue it the way he would have wanted.
Despite the grief, I thank him. I know that if I could get through the loss of such an intricate part of my life, I can get through anything. In this respect his passing has made me strong. I try to think of it as a gift. The gift of strength…
Stay positive.
I have experienced so many of the emotions and thoughts as the author of this article. I not only remember all the “firsts” regarding life after the death of my younger brother (and only sibling), but I also remember the “lasts”. The last time i spoke to my brother, the last time we watched a NFL game together, the last time we went to Lake Tahoe together, the last time we were “normal”~ before he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 41. I call those the pre~cancer days. I never thought I could get through some of the milestones since Michael’s death ~ the first Christmas without him, my niece and nephew’s birthday without him, the first Mother’s Day & Father’s Day without him and the most painful first anniversary ~ from Aug 20th-Dec20th ~ reliving every single day of his illness and his death and funeral. I had (and still do) such a hard time just going out in public. We have lived in the same small town our whole lives, so every where I look are reminders and memories of my brother. On one occasion, I walked into a grocery store several months after my brother died, saw a big display of Otter Pops (a favorite of ours since we were kids) and became so distraught I had to leave the store. One fortunate thing I have noticed concerning remembering my brother’s life is that the painful memories are slowly fading and the good memories, the childhood memories, and the happy times I spent with my brother are becoming MORE VIVID and are so comforting to me. I seem to smile more than I cry these days. It is an ongoing daily struggle living without my brother, but I am amazed that I have managed to get through seven years. My heart will always have an empty place since my brother died, but it is still beating and life still goes on.
My Dad died of cancer a little over 21 years ago, when I was 18. I recognize so many of your moments. For me, the space between the moments has grown with time. And although the seconds and thirds were still hard; with the tenths, elevenths, fifteens, the crushing grief has been replaced with this oddly gentle, familiar, almost precious, sadness that is so much a part of me now that I can’t imagine myself without it.
As time has passed there are of course new first moments; some of them expected – the birth of my son, my own PhD graduation (my dad was a scientist too). Others caught me off guard – the shock of reading his CV and realizing that the first class he ever taught as an academic was the same as mine, the surprising anger I felt when I moved here to the US and discovered that Father’s Day is on a different day of the year here. This was oddly like another little loss, another way that life moves on and leaves him forever behind.
Still others could not be correctly seen as moments, they loomed from the distance as inevitable and awful milestones – such as the passing of the precise minute in which it became true that I had lived more of my life with his absence than with his presence. But even in this moment, digging deep into the heart of all these feelings, it’s more like visiting an old friend than picking at an old wound. My grief and loss is woven into the fabric of me and has, I think through that slow weaving, changed in quality.
I remember one day, the second anniversary of his death. I was driving down a very long, straight, empty road of the sort that Australian has in spades. I had this sudden image of my life as me speeding down that road. Dad was forever behind me and my future stretched out empty in front – awful for the fact that for every minute I lived, I got further from the last moment we were on the road together. So much of that image has held true, life does barrel forwards at a pace that can take your breath away – with no regard for one’s desire to stop and turn back. What was not accurate was the vision of emptiness and the sense awfulness. It is surprising to me looking back that it was all bearable and that my life has been full and often joyful and exciting, but it has. I have loved and been loved, I have made a new life, and through all this made for myself, a life. I did all this without him next to me, instead I have made all that he has been to me, including the grief, a part of me and carried it as my little passenger.
I hope one day you will feel the same way, or something similar. It feels to me like a good way of traveling.
God’s Word, the Bible, provides the greatest comfort of all. The Christian apostle Paul stated: “I have hope toward God . . . that there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Acts 24:15) Thinking about the Bible-based hope of a resurrection can be the greatest comfort while grieving the loss of a loved one………..
I find comfort in knowing I am not alone in my grief. Even though my father died decades ago, when I was twelve, I miss him intensely. I suppose I have what is called complicated grief, but even after years and years of therapy, my sadness about my father’s death, my trauma, really, is only just manifesting clearly. I feel like I am two people: the grown-up woman and the adolescent who lost her protective and loving parent. I did not have a loving mother – after my father’s death, I was left with a bitter, angry mother who never cared for me.
I very much like what Anita shared, that she carries both all that her father has been to her AND her grief for him as a “little passenger” that is part of her journey. That is a helpful image: my therapist has been trying to get me to see how much of my father is embedded in me; if I think of the grief itself as just another little part of the package, perhaps the rest of my journey will be eased.
Thank you for this site.
I stumbled upon this site while at work thinking about my Dad. He passed away two weeks ago on Jan. 28th. (It was also my Mom’s birthday). This was a wonderful post and I have sat here fighting back tears, only because I don’t want to loose it in front of others. I am glad I found this site. I have been feeling exhausted and tired. I am not motivated to do anything, but I know I have to keep going. I don’t want to sink into the abyss. I know my father is in Heaven and that he is no longer suffering. It’s just those of us left are having a hard time. My father had Alzheimer’s, so it like I have lost him twice: 1. Real Dad & 2. Physical Dad. I thought I was okay with him passing, but now, I really miss him and how he used to be.
Beautifully written , WOW !! I lost my Dad when he was 44 and I was 19 , to a massive heart attack. It was one of the hardest times of my life. I was in college and expected to continue on , forging ahead , all of my friends LOVED my Dad. They were all so sorry for my loss. That was 30 years ago , and I have just tried to make him proud . He missed my college graduation , my wedding and the birth of my 3 son’s.. BUT I see him , I see him in them . They are loving , they are FUNNY and they are kind. I guess my point is if you have a wonderful parent YOU are blessed , so few do. They leave memories , special sayings and fleeting thoughts with us for ever ! The ” missing ” never goes away, it gets “easier”. Bless you all to find “happiness” on the other side of grief as that is what they want for us..
Thank you for this! My dad passed from a brain tumor almost 9 years ago and I still have all of these thoughts and emotions. I feel guilty and selfish wanting him to share my successes but mainly I wonder “what would he say if he were here?” It is nice to know others have these grieving moments no matter how much time has passed!
We lost our father ths last January to cancer. To date back a little….My wife and I, December of 2011 were blessed with a child. Who, at the time we knew the chances of survival were very slim. So before she was born, Our parents were called. So, both our fathers were there. During the whole process my dad was there with us holding hands and givin advice like only my father could. Then she was born, and we had to say goodbye after only a few minutes. both our fathers helped with lots, though i sought my dads emotional support, and still did for some time. When he learned the we were to have another, he was there for us the entire time. We lost her in November after a short time. Only this time, in the aftermath dad wasnt there. The day of our infants service. We took my father to the hospital, to find out a few days later that he had stage four cancer. Then, we all spent as much time as we could with him. But he is gone now. i think about him daily as i do my little angels that are no longer with us. It dos get easier for some. But in the wake of things it may seem un-bearable, Believe me… Not a day has passed in over a year that i have not thought of a lost loved one. Im lucky enough to have family around. that helps… Some. We all know our Fatthers on a different level than other people do. So i know each person has different reminders that act as a trigger.
As I sit here tears flowing, I know that life goes on. I am a month shy of one year from my dad passing. I searched “one year after the loss of a parent” in google and found this page. My husband saw me crying and asked what’s wrong… I don’t know. I do know that I don’t like it. I’m the person who is there for everyone else, but I don’t know how to be here for myself. I have plastered on a professional face every day since it happened and I cry in the shower so I don’t bother others. I try to hold it all together but some times I slip and have those “grief attacks” but as much as I try I’m finding it harder and harder to want to go out and do those things that used to make me happy. Its not that I don’t want to be happy… I just don’t want to do anything. I think “letting go one finger at a time” is going to stick with me. I just have to get thru this….
I lost my dad 3 years ago. Every time I see an older man I think I see my father in him…I think I see a resemblence….even when there is no resemblence at all.
Thanks Stephanie for expressing so well the grief and loss we feel when Dad dies.
I lost my soulmate, my Dad in October 2008. Having nursed him for four months I returned to the UK and then wasn’t able to be with him when he began to fail again and then passed / went next door. Dad was my mate, my friend and my parent. Four and a half years on I speak to him often, hear his voice, something will trigger a memory and I find myself chuckling and saying “alright Dad, I know you are still with me”. My Dad could sing and some so I hear something he used to sing and find the tears pouring down my face as I try to sing the song and yet I’m smiling at the same time at the memory. When Dad first passed, everyone would speak to or listen to me about him. As time goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to speak to anyone about Dad. It becomes “get over it”, “time you moved on” and yet there is no “getting over” or “moving on” from such a loss. I’m learning that there is a level of acceptance, a knowledge that Dad has physically gone, however there is also the sure knowledge that Dad will always be within me through memories, photos, tapes of his singing and whilst the tears do still come – often unexpectedly – this does help incredibly.
i recalled all the scenes of 18 years back when he was alive…
I lost my Dad to liver cancer a year and a half ago. I thought I was prepared for the grief-but I did’nt realize how many facets grief has. What suprised me the most was the loss of mostly all of my long term friends. A few fell off right away, like I had the plague-then the others, one by one. My best friend of 25 years isnt speaking to me now because I have been a pretty selfish friend over the past few years, but as sad as it makes me, deep down, I don’t care. I am not the same person I was before my Dad died, and I will NEVER be that person again. The callousness of people (especially those that profess to being your friend) amazes me. I had one friend ask me what was making me so emotionally hardened??? what makes me feel really awful is thinking “just wait…just wait until something happens to YOUR Dad-then let me know how you feel”. On top of all of that, my eight year old neice was recentley diagnosed with brain cancer-so my world is still ripping apart at the seams on a daily basis. I miss my Dad, I am scared for my niece and my sister-trying to help my Mom keep it together-and no friends. Anyone else have this happen?
My mom is in poor health, she had a heart attack and has had 3 angioplasties. Her and my dad planned for her to go first (which I always hated hearing). My dad was a health nut, always taking vitamins to help this or that. 2 weeks ago my dad died of a massive pulmonary embolism, very unexpected. I stayed with my mom for 2 weeks, but know I am 300 miles away. We have a wonderful family who tries to help my mom out as much as possible, but I still worry about her. So with all that I am having a very hard time trying to keep from crying all the time. My heart hurts so much from his passing that it don’t feel like it will ever lesson.