What is an hour worth in your life?
In mine, it’s the gap between my life being normal to totally upended. My dad breathed his last an hour before I reached him. I was 1 hour/60 minutes/3600 seconds late.
Spiritually it’s said that everyone’s time of birth and death is decided, and no one can escape the cycle or breathe even a second more than they have written in fate. That the only thing certain in life is ‘death’. I don’t know if I can accept this right now. I have to live with the fact that I lost one of the most important people in my life. He was the wind beneath my wings, my strength, my rock, my mentor, my biggest supporter, my kind parent, for a good part of my life my only parent when mom took care of the younger two, the one I’d call if I was going through anything that I couldn’t handle – boy I can handle a lot. Now he’s gone. And this I can’t handle.
It’s been two months since my makers heart stopped beating while mine continued. My grief has taken many shapes and forms: anger, denial, guilt, regret, resentment, hollowness, hopelessness, helplessness, loneliness, and longing. It bared the reality of people around me and my own soul too. It taught me lessons that I didn’t want to learn. It bent me and humbled me. It even surprised me.
Grief made me go through as many moments with him as my memory could possibly recall. Grief made me go through each alternative way this could have gone, had something different happened. Grief took me to the deepest depths in my heart and the shallowness around it. It opened me towards profound kindness. More than anything, grief taught me resilience. It taught me how to move on with life carrying the unbearable load of it.
Grief was better with others that were going through it or had gone through it. Harder apart. Hardest when alone. Grief ebbs and flows. It makes me feel his divine presence, laugh at his old jokes, and smile thinking of his smile. Grief makes me talk to him several times each day – something I wish I had done more when he was alive.
Grief lives within me, it’s a part of me now.
His physical absence has made a bigger impact than words can ever express. And I didn’t even get to say ‘Goodbye Papa’. I wonder if I could have ever said that? Would have I ever let him go? I don’t know. But the hardest pill to swallow is that I wasn’t there and I didn’t even have the chance.
All goodbyes are extremely painful when a loved one is lost, but the hardest goodbye is…the one that is never said!
So I carry him in my days as my own breath, and do the necessary and mundane.
The harsh reality of life is that it goes on – No.Matter.What. Life has a way of knocking one down in the worst ways but the choice to swim or drown is ours. I know my dad would’ve wanted me to carry on strongly. And that’s the choice I make every day. This resilience is my dad’s gift to me and I accept it. But I’m never going to be able to say Goodbye!
Thank you for reading.
Daddy’s Girl Forever!
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If you or someone you know has gone through or is going through bereavement and would benefit from interacting with someone who’s gone through similar experiences, feel free to reach out or let them know I am here and willing to talk or just sit in the silences through tears with you/them.
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