Two Years Out

Have you ever run into someone whom you haven't seen in awhile and noticed that something about that person that you can't put your finger on has changed?  Maybe it was something so indistinguishable, so subtle, that you have even wondered if it was just your imagination, but still you felt that something was different about that person than it was in the past.  That's what grief feels like for me at this point.  It has changed over the course of the two years since my dad died, but it's hard to say exactly how.  Or maybe I have changed in how I address the grief and in how I cope.  One thing is for sure, though: it's still looming; it's not any less of a threat except for the fact that I guess I have learned a little bit about how to manage it.  

Part of me is shocked and even a little bit impressed (surprised?) that we've made it to the two year point after my dad went on ahead.  We've done it; we've helped each other through it and we've survived it, so far.  Some days, though, it feels like running the third lap of a four-lap mile around the track, which for me was always the most painful because I knew that I had to give it my all in that part of the race but I was also aware that there was so much work left to be done even after that lap had been completed.  Part of me is so shocked and so saddened by that fact that we're already at the two-year mark that just the thought that it has been that long since I've seen him immediately brings tears to my eyes.  Two years.  How did that happen?

I had a dream about my dad a couple of nights ago, and in it he was sick and he kept asking me, "How did we get here?"  At first, I thought he meant that he wanted to know how we had arrived in the physical location where we were, which was, oddly, sitting on a bench in a park that was not familiar to me (and certainly it wasn't somewhere that I went with him while he was sick), but then it dawned on me that he was asking how we had gotten to that exact point in time.  And then in the dream I turned to him on the bench with tears in my eyes and I said, "We got here because of your strength, your courage, your toughness, your determination, and your love, and we will never forget that."  I knew he want to know how he had gotten cancer and how it had gotten so bad so quickly, but no one knew the answers to those questions.  What I did know in the dream - what I wanted to convey to him - and what I do know in real life is that my dad is the reason that my family and I have had the fortitude not to crumble in the midst of the biggest challenge of our lives; time and time again, we have held him up as an example of how to face the pain of our grief, how to cope with the sadness and the anger that threaten to overtake the joy and the promise of hope for a better tomorrow, and how to look for the good on even the roughest of days.  That's how we have gotten here; that's how we've made it through these two years since he had to go on ahead.

But of course knowing that doesn't make me miss him any less; if anything, the passage of time makes me miss him more!

It's not just that today marks the two year anniversary of my dad's death that brings him to mind; I miss him all the time.

I miss how he and I could laugh over the craziest things, sometimes things we knew were ridiculous or even dumb but we thought they were funny anyway. 

About ten years ago, Dad and I drove from my house to the small town in Alabama where my grandmother lived to pick her up and bring her back to my house so she wouldn't be alone on Christmas.  It was about a 7-hour long drive each way, and we had a great time talking and laughing along the way, just the two of us on the way there and then with Grandmom on the way back.  At one point en route to her house, we stopped at a gas station that happened to be in a rough neighborhood; we both got a big fountain drink inside the convenience store and then got back into the car.  As Dad pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the street, we heard a loud ricocheting type of noise on the back window of the car.  Each of us instinctively ducked our head as Dad quickly pulled the car over onto the side of the road so we could see what had made the noise; we both thought we had been caught in a crossfire that had shattered the glass on the back window.  When we'd had a few seconds to process things, though, we realized that the sound had come from the ice from the drinks that had spilled as we'd turned the corner after both of us had set our cups on the roof and had forgotten them there as we got back in the car.  A good laugh ensued, and we headed out onto the road again.

I miss the inside jokes and the memories we shared from running together.  One thing we used to talk about in that vein was our strategy of "rounding up" our run time ("If you say you'll be out running for 40-45 minutes, you can go for almost an hour before anybody notices," Dad had advised me many times throughout the years when I complained about not having as much time as I liked to have to run.  Prior to the time when he began training for the Ironman triathlon, his fitness goal from age 55-65 was to work out for an hour a day, at least 5 days per week.)  

I miss the exuberant way he marked his place in books, by folding half of the page down.  I was reminded of this just a couple of weeks ago when I was going through some books to see which ones could be donated to charity and I came across a book that he had handed down to me a few years ago, complete with folded down pages marking the places where he had taken a break from reading along the way.

I miss the way he took joy in everyday tasks and, in doing so, he made them fun for those around him.  This included lots of things he did to entertain me on long runs - things like singing as he ran and alternately bounced and caught a tennis ball to the beat of a song, like taking me on different running routes that he had scouted out in advance to make each one an adventure, and like coming up with unusual training techniques for the two of us like running up and down the steps on the outside of a grain storage bin for a certain amount of time (which he then challenged me to try to improve on when we did it again the next week).  

We ran up and down steps like these
as one of our training routines.

There were lots of non-running tasks that Dad made fun, too, though.  One thing I was thinking about recently was what he called "Laundry Parties."  When I was a teenager, Dad, as the person in our house who did most of the laundry, had trouble discerning whose clothes were whose between my mom's, my sisters', and mine, and so he often brought laundry baskets full of clean clothes into the den, dumped them on the couch, and announced to my sisters and me that we had to help fold them.  "It'll be fun!" he'd say. "It's a Laundry Party!" and, although we usually groaned and complained about having to help, he always joked around and made a usually boring task fun.  

I miss the way he hugged, which was often more back patting than anything else.  Somehow his technique always seemed to instill confidence in me, as if the back-patting was literally him patting me on the back to let me know he thought I'd done something right.

I miss the funny random emails and phone calls from him, sometimes about something so out of the blue that just his question or comment made me laugh out loud.  Once he called to ask me how to spell "coulotte" (pronounced "coo-lot" - this is a style of women's pants also known as a split skirt, in case you didn't know).  I spelled it for him, he thanked me, and then, obviously in the middle of a thought, he hung up.  I had to ask him later why he needed to know: he had been writing a memo to employees in his office about what was and what wasn't acceptable attire for Casual Fridays.

I miss the funny rules he made up for some things, like "I never drink beer that I can see through," a rule he imposed several years back when he discovered that he had a penchant for dark beer, despite the fact that he had been drinking lite beer for decades before that.

I miss the smell of Brut on him, so much that I sometimes break out a bottle of it that I have stashed in my bathroom just to take a whiff of it.  It's comforting in that context; it's disturbing and sad when I smell it on someone else in passing, as if that intrudes on the comfort of it in my memories from when he wore it.  

I miss the way he bounced on the balls of his feet when he walked.  I miss his competitiveness, which he carried on with himself as much as anyone else, and I miss his pride.  I miss the way he could (and usually did) talk to anyone who crossed his path.

I miss the way he lost certain things, like his wallet, so often that he tended not to worry about it whenever he did; like he did with a lot of other things, he didn't worry because he thought worrying was a waste of time and he just believed that everything would be ok.

I miss having him ask me about my job and how things were with my husband and the kids; I really miss how he used to listen to what I said in response and then how he would sometimes sigh as if he felt exhausted on my behalf and then say, "I don't know how you do it all!" with so much pride and admiration in his voice that it soothed me and made me proud, even when I'd felt like I had been struggling before then.

I miss his no-nonsense attitude and advice, the same kind he gave me when I called to tell him that I'd been offered my first job as an occupational therapist after I'd graduated from college.  I told him what the salary would be and that I thought it would be a great place to gain experience, and then I said that I had told the human resources department that I would get back to them about my decision.  Without missing a beat, he said, "Haven't you been wanting to work at a children's hospital like that for many years?"  I told him that I had, and he said,  "Well, then, what are you waiting for?" was the advice I got in return, in response to which I hung up with him and made the call to accept the job. 

I don't think Dad always recognized the value that other people found in the advice that he gave out, though.  Late one night when he was in rehab and he, as usual, couldn't sleep, we were talking about the schedule for the next day and I reminded him that I was leaving to drive back home as soon as my mom got back to stay with him the next morning.  "Be really careful driving back," he told me, and then he said, "Be sure not to stop for gas in the valley on the way back; it could be dangerous there and cell phone coverage isn't good."  He paused and added, "But I'm sure you can take care of yourself."

Before I could say anything in response, he commented, "Sometimes I worry that any advice I've given you hasn't been about the important things."

"What do you mean, Dad?" I asked him. "You've given us good advice!" to which he responded, "All I can remember telling you is stuff like always keep a towel in the trunk of your car and put some toilet paper in the waistband of your shorts when you go for a run in the woods."  It was true; he had told me both of those things many times throughout my life, and, truth be told, I always did both of them (and still do).  But, of course, that wasn't the bulk of the advice he had given to me over the years, and I wanted to be sure he realized that.  "You've taught me a lot more than that," I told him, but the only answer I got was the sound of his rhythmic snoring.  After tossing and turning and chatting for the majority of the night, he had, at last, fallen asleep.

I miss the lists of "suggestions" he emailed to us before his birthday, Father's Day, and Christmas.  To me, he was always the easiest person to buy a gift for, not just because of the list but because he had such distinct hobbies and because he would often just "make do" with whatever he already had instead of buying the latest and greatest accessories and gadgets for himself, leaving it open for us to give those things to him later if we wanted.

Once when we were running together during the time that I was preparing for a marathon, I told him that I had gotten some new gear to help me with the training and that I had estimated that I had several hundred dollars of equipment on me every time I went out the door to run.  He actually stopped in the road and said, "Are you serious?"  Yes, I told him, but that included my high-tech clothes, my shoes, my GPS-enabled watch, my heart-rate monitor, my sunglasses, and my iPod.  "That's crazy!" he said, incredulous.  He started running again but insisted that we go back by the house so that I could "ditch the extras." "That way we can really run just to run," he said.  And that's what we did.  How I miss being able to do that with him, and to talk about anything or nothing along the way.  Damn.

Missing Him

A couple of weeks after my dad died, a friend of mine who had lost her mother a couple of years before that told me that the thing that left her with the most sadness since her mom's passing was thinking about the senses associated with her mom.  I didn't really understand what she meant at the time; I wasn't able to isolate what the worst or the most difficult part of all of it was because it all seemed so unbelievable and so horrible at that point.

I know now what she meant.  Thinking about my dad's hands, his legs, his wrinkles, his face, his voice, his laugh, his smile, his eyes - all of his physical presence - and how I'll never be able to be around them again makes me feel so sad, so lonely, and so very desperate.  

Sometimes I get a little glimpse of what I think for a split second is my dad, and in that moment I am like a drowning person struggling to get back to the surface of the water for air.  

About a month after my dad died, I was driving to work and saw a man that resembled him driving a car just like his.  I had to pull over to the side of the road and catch my breath.  

For months after he went on ahead, I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I'd heard him calling my name, just like he did so many nights when he was sick.  

As I sat crying on the night of the six-month anniversary of his death, I picked up my cell phone and impulsively texted "I love you" to the cell phone number by his name in my list of contacts.  A few minutes later, I got a response that read, "Who even is this?"  I felt like I'd been sucker punched.  Part of me wanted to text back, "Dad!! It's me! Are you ok?"  but I just kept sitting there crying, and after a few minutes another message flashed on the screen that said: "I think you have the wrong number."  

Several times when I've heard a group of people singing, I've thought I could pick out the sound of his voice singing above all the rest.  Each time that has happened, I let myself look into the crowd, just to make sure.

About six months ago, I posted the last part of the Behind the Scenes Story on this blog.  The song I chose to link to at the end of that entry was Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here."  My husband, who, incidentally, doesn't usually read this blog, invited me to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to Natchez, MS, with him a few days later.  While we were there, we asked around to find out where a cool bar was and ended up in a bizarre little place that was literally built into the side of the levee, a pub called Under The Hill.  

Only a few minutes after we walked in and sat down on our barstools, a guy started playing his acoustic guitar, and his first song was that exact Pink Floyd song.  Luckily, the darkness of the room hid the tears that rolled down my face as I sat there and listened in awe to the music.

This past summer, we had an accidental "iCloud" syncing of all of the Apple devices in my household, and all of our Contact Lists were blended together.  I didn't think too much about it until a few days later when my phone rang and I looked at the screen to see that it was showing up as "Dad" calling.  Evidently, my daughters had my husband's phone number listed under "Dad" in their Contact List, and so the iCloud sync had added that into my phone so that my husband's call showed up that way on my phone.  In the split second it took me to realize what had happened, part of my brain actually believed it was my dad calling me, and I felt my heart sink into my stomach when the reality of what was really happening dawned on me.

On the night before we left to take my older daughter to college for the first time, I was sitting outside on my deck and noticed that the wind was blowing through only some of the branches of one of the many trees in my backyard.  It was kind of eerie, and the words, "Hi, Dad," went through my mind.  About 15 seconds later, an owl hooted from in the woods behind my house.  I couldn't see it, but I exchanged a "Hello?" with the owl several times before the hooting and the isolated wind-blowing stopped.

A couple of weeks ago when my family was in New Orleans, I took my younger daughter and her friends to see the hotel where my parents stayed every February when they went for a business convention.  There, by the fountain in the lobby of the hotel, I thought for a split second that I saw my dad out of the corner of my eye, but, when I turned to look more closely, there was no one there.  

On the surface, it seems like getting a tiny glimpse or feeling a split-second connection to a loved one who has gone on ahead would be soothing, and maybe one day it will be for me - but now it mostly feels like salt (or something even worse) being poured in a wound. 

"Although their physical form is gone, you are not living your life without him or her. To live truly without them would be to never have known them. Instead, you continue to live with them infused in your heart, in your memories, in your spirit. You live with their love etched into your being. They will always, now and forever, be a part of you."

What I Miss the Most, Today

I recently signed up for an online class that looks at dealing with grief through writing.  This week's assignment is to write about what we miss the most about the person for whom we are grieving.  This is my entry, which is kind of a follow-up to the original What I Miss The Most post from last October ...


I guess the thing I miss the most about my dad is his enthusiasm.  He was without a doubt the most gung-ho (he loved that term) person I've ever known, always motivated and always looking at the glass as half full, and his contagious energy was something that affected everyone in his presence.  That ties into what I have come to realize was the best thing he left to those of us who were lucky enough to have known him: his perspective.  During my life, I observed him so many times in the role of the life of the party, a great conversationalist, and a friend to so many; I always thought he was so popular because he was so much fun to be around.  But after he went on ahead I realized from things that people (some of whom I didn't know even though they knew my dad) told us that it was actually his kindness and his positivity that attracted so many people to him, and I saw how far reaching his genuineness and his perspective truly were.  

     What I wear on my wrist every day to remind myself to try to be positive,
just like my dad 

I am trying hard to emulate that benevolence in my daily life these days, but, in the midst of my grief, I am finding it to be very hard to do so.  I miss my dad and his zeal for life so much that it often makes me angry and/or sad; I know that's just part of the grief process, but it makes me feel like I am not honoring him or carrying on in his footsteps when I can't be as excited and cheerful as he always was.

What I Didn't See Coming

Since my dad went on ahead 18 months ago today, I have come to realize that when someone you love dies, you don’t just have to say goodbye to them at the time they pass away but also at every crossroad, every milestone, every big event.  I've discovered that there are endless firsts and countless tough moments to get through, not just obvious ones like holidays and big events, but many others that are equally if not more challenging and shocking, which in many cases makes them even more difficult 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 ride the school bus, 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, things change, and we have to adjust.  And then the firsts that come can bring about a sadness that is hard to shake, a feeling of extreme loneliness because you know the picture isn’t really complete and things aren’t as they should be.

And so as we traverse through the forest of firsts and other challenging moments in the midst of our shock, our sadness, and our grief, we are forced to let go, one finger at a time.  For me, the milestones have been hard, sometimes really 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 that day, on the way up to see my friend, I almost had a panic attack when the flashback hit me. It was a different hospital and a different reason for my being there this time, but when my mind careened back to a few months before, to the many elevator rides we took in the hospital when we were taking care of Dad, the unexpected flood of emotions that swept through me was shockingly debilitating.  

When I hear about someone giving birth to the first child in their family and especially when I hear about how excited someone is to become a grandparent for the first time, I flash back to when my first child was born.  As Dad happily took a turn rocking my daughter in the rocking chair in her room when she was just a few days old, I could hear him over the baby monitor singing to her and having a one-sided conversation with her, telling her that he was so proud of her and how he was so glad to be a grandfather at the age of 50 and that he thought it would be a good plan for him to become a great-grandfather when he turned 75.

There’ve been lots of other Flashback Moments too:  there was the first time I went to a funeral after I'd buried my own father, and there was the first time I found myself in the pick-up lane at the airport and I realized that I was in the exact place I was when I found out Dad had a mass in his head.  Every time I hear someone say “Howdy!” just the way Dad used to greet people in passing.  Just recently, on our family vacation, I was standing on the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard and suddenly I was hit by the awareness that the last time I was in that exact spot, less than a week before my dad’s diagnosis, my life as far as I knew was as it should be.  Hearing a song that Dad used to sing and recognizing that the only way I will ever hear his beautiful voice again is in my dreams is heartbreaking, every time it happens. 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 as I remember; 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.  Even when the flood of memories from before his illness come to me in situations, I am almost knocked to the ground by the sadness and anger that come along for the ride too because I know in my heart that that’s how things should still be, with my family together, Dad singing and laughing, enjoying life as he always did.

And then there are The Stinging Moments, those that rub salt into my wounds, the ones that make me feel like I am walking on a very wobbly tightrope, like when I am watching TV and the story line is one in which one of the characters is dying and/or has cancer (or even brain cancer!).  Like 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.  Like the times when I’m searching for a contact on my phone or in my email and his name automatically pops up, such a cruel reminder of how I can't talk to him anymore.  Like just now, when I typed the number 18 in the first sentence of this post.  Like 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, and I was hit by another wave of realization about what had happened and what couldn’t happen.  Like the ones when I feel like I shouldn't STILL be crying so much or the ones when I lie and say I'm fine when someone asks how I am.  Those are the times that I keep forgetting to expect, the ones that leave me with a just-slapped feeling that I’m not sure will ever lessen or 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 and 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, they are so tough without him, even worse than I thought they would be.  I so often think about how he would've loved the things that we are all able to do, the ones that he isn’t still here to do ... going the beach, riding a roller coaster, drinking a beer, swimming and lying in the sun on a hot day, 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 is missing.  The ones that make me tear up and grind my teeth and CUSS because I am just so damn angry, over and over again. 

The first time I went on a run after my dad went on ahead, 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 couldn’t be.  And he LOVED it.  That day, I ended up cutting my run short and trying it again the next day; the second time I wore some of Dad’s running socks and things went a little better, but it still stung.

When my daughter graduated from high school a couple of months ago, I knew that getting through the ceremony without become a total emotional wreck would be tough for me for so many reasons, including the fact that her Gramps wasn’t there with us to see her and to tell her how fiercely proud of her he was.  As I watched her walk across the stage and accept her diploma, I felt the love, the excitement, the joy, and the pride more than anything else, and I got through it without a tear, but what happened after the graduation that night was even harder than I’d thought the ceremony would be: my husband had made a dinner reservation for nine people at the restaurant where we went afterwards; however, when we got there, the table was actually 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 like a blatant reminder to me, such a glaring physical sign of the very important person who wasn’t able to be 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. Each time I start to call him and realize that I can't. 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 first time he became a person whose name was being written "in memory of" instead of him writing that to honor someone else.  The times when I need to ask him a question and he isn't here to give the answer that only he knew. Ouch.  

Another kind of moment that I didn’t see coming has been The Shadow Moments, the times I've seen someone doing something in everyday life that he would (should) be doing now ... scenes that, if I squint my eyes and get the angle of the view just right, give me a second to glimpse what I can pretend is actually my dad, in the moment, here as he was meant to be: a man about his age running or biking, someone swimming in the ocean, a person sitting in the sun reading the paper and drinking a Diet Coke in a Sonic cup.  All of it, underscoring the unfairness, again.

Also making the list are the surreal Not-Supposed-To Times, the 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 who doesn’t know our story that my father passed away.  Or the first time I had to mark the box next to Family History of Cancer and then write brain in the box beside Type/Other.  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 so proud of the good grades they are making, 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 probably unappreciated by or perhaps even imperceptible in the awareness of other people who didn't know him in the exact way I did: the first summer Olympics, the really hot runs of the summer (“Anybody can run in good weather,” he said at the start of every summer, “but it takes a real runner to brave very hot conditions.”), going to the movies and ordering popcorn and then saying "No way, but thanks anyway!" (as Dad always did) when the worker asks do I want butter on the popcorn, the times when I think of something that I know he would think is funny or interesting and I realize that I can’t share it with him. These things leave me with an aching in my heart because he enjoyed them so thoroughly and now he can't.

The first Mother’s Day after he died was one of the worst days I’ve had in regards to handling the grief.  I expected that first Father’s Day to be hard, but when I woke up on Mother’s Day that year, all I could think about was how my dad wasn’t there to honor my mom (or his own mom, who’d passed away just a few weeks before that first Mother’s Day), and my heart was unexpectedly full of sadness even more than usual that day.  When we took my daughter to visit the college she will attend this fall: Dad was so good at meeting people and making everyone feel comfortable, and I kept thinking that he would have loved to be there with us to help her meet people and acclimate to the new surroundings and he would have been so proud of her and so impressed with her college choice.  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 him being around to know about it, to see the pictures, to hear about how much fun she had.  And even the minor, the everyday times, that come in intermittent blasts, like when I see an Advil tablet dropped on the floor like he used to do or when I eat an apple and catch myself thinking I should just go ahead and eat the core too ("It saves time!" he reasoned whenever someone asked him about why he did it.) just like he always did.  Those are the ones that pop into my head and shoot me with a spear of grief and all the emotions that come with it, but at the same time somehow those memories sometimes bring a smile to my face as I remember how unique of a person my dad was and how his viewpoint, his perspective, and his “don’t sweat the small stuff” attitude are something I will carry with me forever.

And 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?