Nearly four weeks ago, on October 26th I watched my recently turned 55-year old stepfather take his last breath. He had gone into hospice a few days prior after battling two types of cancer and sustaining a stroke late this summer. One moment he was here, the next he was gone.
While I will be forever grateful that I was able to make it back to my hometown and be there to see him, hold him, and tell him goodbye, nothing could’ve prepared me for this.
Poppa Jeff has been a prominent person in my life since I was 9 years old. He and my mom were together for over 20 years. I was always so incredibly grateful for him because I don’t have a relationship with my biological father. Poppa Jeff was it for me, and I am so thankful that he was in my life. We went on my first vacation together, he taught me how to kick and throw a football, he also taught me how to drive. When I was upset, he would be there to give me a hug and to let me know that he was there for me. He drove me to DC the summer I interned there, and we went and explored some of the sites together. He also drove me to Denver back in 2011 when I moved here for the first time to do Teach For America and go to grad school. He was always down for an adventure! I miss his funny personality and consideration.
I’m feeling completely wrecked without him.
Finding accurate words to describe how I feel is hard for me, but I’m going to try. The past month, the world has continued to spin, people have gone about their lives, but it feels like it’s stopped for me. Everything has felt insignificant. Brain fog has made a new home in my head. This sustained level of grief has made me mostly isolate myself and feel like a shell of who I am. I simply haven’t been able to engage in my normal everyday life, it’s been so exhausting to even try.
So I’ve turned to books, poems, and words from others who can better articulate these feelings for me.
I’ve also thought about and read more about death and grief in the past month than ever before. Talk about a coincidence: I went to my bookshelf to find a new book to read and picked up Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. In the book, she shares an autobiographical recount of the year after her husband’s death in 2003. Reading her experience was cathartic because it showed me that humans have these shared experiences, and we can comfort one another by being vulnerable and sharing our stories to let others in and feel not alone.
Some poignant quotes from the book:
- “Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity. Those were the first words I wrote after it happened.”
- “Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”
- “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves the for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief was we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”
- “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.”
In addition to this book, I’ve experienced comfort and empathy from others. I recently learned that my sweet friend, Renee is in the same grief boat as I am. Her father died two days after Poppa Jeff. While I wish neither of us was in this situation, it has been a blessing to have her fully, unequivocally understand what I’m currently going through because she’s in the thick of it all, too. We’re going to lean on one another to support each other through this mess.
This kindness and grace I’ve felt from others are heartwarming. My team at work sent me a lovely self-care package and told me to take as much time as I need away from work. My friend, Angie hand-delivered a care package to my doorstep with the best baked good loaf in the world. These gestures mean the world to me.
Thinking ahead, my heart breaks a little every time I think about our upcoming wedding. Originally, I had wanted to elope – I never wanted a wedding before. After we got engaged in August, though, I thought about how this would be one of the only opportunities for our parents to meet. It was important to me that they meet, we’re combining families after all.
The thing is, Poppa Jeff always asked when we were going to get married (Cesar and I have been together for 7.5 years now), and I’d be lying if I said I’m not carrying some guilt about not doing it sooner. I expected him to be there, I wanted him to be there, I needed him to be there with me. I should’ve been ready sooner.
I have to stop myself.
Reading helps me.
As I throw myself into a new book, the one I picked up yesterday is Glennon Doyle’s 2016 read, Love Warrior, which I already had on my bookshelf and hadn’t yet read (how these two books that I’ve mentioned were on my bookshelf and I hadn’t yet read them – truly serendipitous).
Now, I’ll leave you with a few quotes from Love Warrior that have struck me, helping me feel seen and heard:
- “Grief is love’s souvenir. It’s our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.”
- “People who need help sometimes look a lot like people who don’t need help.”
- “Grief and pain are like joy and peace; they are not things we should try to snatch from each other. They’re sacred. they are part of each person’s journey. All we can do is offer relief from this fear: I am all alone. That’s the one fear you can alleviate.”
…at the end of the day, how lucky am I to love someone so much to hurt this much?
