After Grief

"You cannot die of grief, thought it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death."
- Stroke of Midnight by Laurell K. Hamilton, pg. 41

That passage really hit me the first time I read it and on subsequent readings, it still gets to me, because it's so true. In time, the pain lessens and your life continues and the day you realize this it's like another loss. When someone dies, your grief, your pain becomes a familiar companion, and when that goes, you have nothing.

It's been thirty-one months since the night my father died. Do I still grieve for him? Of course. Do I still miss him? Again, very much. But it's not the same as it once. It's not all-consuming. I don't think of him every moment, I don't cry over every little thing anymore. I still miss him, but my life isn't definied by that loss anymore.

The hardest thing to accept is that I've built a life that doesn't include my father. For the first little while, there was this gaping whole, and while there's still an empty spot, it's smaller. My life isn't the same as it was that day, its changed, I've changed.

I was 20 on the morning of February 21st, 2004, when I kissed my father goodbye for the last time. I was still trying to find myself and had no clue what my future held, what I wanted it to hold. I had a new job and was experiencing my first attempts at adulthood. I was still a child in many ways.

I'm 23 now. I'm a student, I have a clear plan for my life and I think I have the drive to see it through. I've been making adult decisions for a few years now and doing an okay job of it. I have my friends, I have a boyfriend, I have a pretty good life, but I'm not a child anymore (though I'm still occasionally childish).

Sometimes, I still let the grief take over, but not to the extent that I once did. I was guilty that first while of letting the grief control and define me, I don't think that's true anymore. My life is mine again, but its not an easy thing. It was almost easier when my life was about the loss of my father, instead of facing a life that just doesn't include him.

I'll always love him. I'll always miss him. A part of me will always hurt when I think about him and about everything I lost that day. I'll never think it wasn't a tragedy and a waste. But, day to day, I go on with my life and I will. I'm still alive and I still have a life to live and really that's waht my father would want, for me to be happy. But, in some way, it does feel like another loss, the realization that my life wasn't defined in that one moment and that you can love someone so much and hurt so badly when they die, but still move on.