Anticipatory Grief. The first time I heard this word, it struck a nerve with me, for a reason I didn’t fully comprehend at the time. I’d written this word down in my notebook one day during class, but I made sure to write it down small enough and drowned it out in a page full of notes and doodles so I wouldn’t somehow bring it into existence. I think my whole family was expecting it. We didn’t know when, but we knew our time with our dad was running out. But none of us wanted to admit it. And if I said it out loud, it felt like I had the ability to speak it into existence and jinx his life.
It’s a fact of the world that you are going to outlive your parents. You cannot somehow magically avoid this. But, that’s the thing: everyone thinks this doesn’t apply to them. I knew my dad was going to die, but he’s my dad, so he can’t. How could a man with a failing heart live to grow old alongside me? He can’t, but he’s my dad, so it might be possible. How could a man who inhales a pharmacy everyday just to maintain his health play with my own kids in the future. He can’t, but he’s my dad, so he’ll have to make it until then. How could a body that isn’t properly taken care of and respected last any longer? The thing is, it can’t.
In my dreams, my dad had already died a hundred times. In his truck, on the sidewalk, on his way home, somewhere between Green Mountain Dr and Main Street, in the hospital with us alongside him. I kept losing him over and over again. It was almost like I was microdosing on grief. And no matter how much one anticipates grief or expects loss coming, they are never prepared for when it actually does come. And when it does, everything that you know about grief goes out of the window.
It’s truly an understatement to say how powerful grief actually is. Grief has the power to keep you aimlessly staring into space for days on end. Grief repeatedly punches you in the face without warning and whispers “he’s dead” with overwhelming clarity. Grief has the power to be pissed off that the world keeps spinning and moving, even when it feels like your world has just spun off its axis.
For me, the hardest thing to do was conceptualize time. The idea of our limited time on earth became a humbling reality when my dad left. How does a life full of plans end so abruptly? It feels impossible to me that a heart full of love could simply stop beating, but somehow it did. You can measure time and say it’s been 85 days without dad here, but in reality, time loses its whole construct when you’re grieving. I kept referring to my dad’s death as happening two weeks ago even as time kept passing–eventually it’d been almost three months since without even realizing.
Part of the reason it hurts so much is because I am reliving my life with him. I’m reliving all my memories and experiences with my dad from childhood, to adolescence and the little adulthood we spent together. It’s weird to think about how right when my life was starting, his ended. And somehow it feels like I’m a kid again, trying to cling onto whatever memory I can recall, similar to living in a timewrap. It’s difficult to explain, but with grief, your life falls out of the present tense, and constantly circulates between the past, present and future. If time permitted it, I’d forever stay daddy’s little girl in all three tenses.
The permanence of time is too shocking to deal with, and sometimes I forget he’s gone. At times, I’m unsure if it actually happened at all or if I’m just dreaming again. I came home for winter break excited to see my family. Except it hit me when I realized dad wouldn’t be at home waiting for me like he always does. And then sometimes it hits me when I realize I still wake up with things to tell him, but now I can’t. And sometimes it hits me when I’m waiting for him to walk through the door, now realizing he can’t. And it hits me when I realize there’ll never be another time when I call out my dad’s name and he’ll be able to respond.
At times, I think I have grief figured out and then there are times where everything I know about grief is contradictory. But one thing I do know about grief is how personal it is. Every single person who is grieving is doing it differently. Even in my household, I see my mom grieving her husband of 25 years, which I can’t relate to. My siblings and I grieve the loss of our dad, which my mom can’t relate to.
With what I know three months in, I have finally learned that you learn to grow around your grief instead of being swallowed by it. And now the grieving process makes sense: you must go backwards to move forwards. It also makes sense how time helps, but simultaneously hurts. The truth is, time won’t heal, but it does help. Time doesn’t permit a solution, but it shows you the different ways you can carry your pain. Eventually time shows you how joy and grief are able to coexist and are more intertwined than you had originally thought.
I am in no means an expert on grief or a grief counselor, but this is what I know and what I am constantly learning everyday. My grief is as ongoing, just as my love for my dad is.