NAVIGATING GRIEF: HOW I FACED MY FATHER’S CANCER AND HIS PASSING

Grieving is a very personal experience, and losing a parent is one of the worst things someone can go through. For me, my father passed away almost seven years ago from Leukemia, known as AML, in the month of February. Not only is February the month I lost my father but World Cancer Day is also acknowledged, which contributed to a lot of support and love from friends and family. During the first few years, on some days, I felt grateful for the memories we had together, but on other days, I felt a fog of sadness. The one thing that keeps me going is completing the dreams he had for me so that I can assure myself that I did it all for something, for my father. I hope that sharing the important things I’ve learned about overcoming this significant loss would benefit anyone who is experiencing a similar situation. 

Being the oldest child in my now family of four, it was hard not having that one person  who was raised in America to guide me through the right and wrong choices here. Growing up in India and moving here after getting married, my mother was unaware of the differences in the education system between her home country and this one. I didn’t know what to study or how to pursue my desired career, but all I knew was that I needed to set an example for my two younger siblings and fulfill my father’s wish for me. As one of the last things dad advised me to do was to become a dentist, I had no idea on how to get to that goal on my own. I still wish I had him to talk to since he was the one guiding me, building on my interests with great ideas and passions. A week before my father passed away I had asked him to help me choose my high school freshman course of study, but he postponed it since he wasn’t feeling well, and by then, it was too late. I was so happy when I got my hands on that course catalog for the year 2018-2019. I still regret to this day not pushing him to help me make my decisions. 

To be quite honest, I didn’t want to believe my dad had passed and for one whole year, I pretended he was just away on a work trip. This was one of those unexpected moments that no one saw coming. It was spontaneous. My thirteen year old self had so many emotions that I just didn’t want anyone to see me breakdown. Thinking back in time, I felt like I had on a fake mask but on the inside, I felt broken. I felt like I hadn’t seen both my parents enough for the two years since they were running around for treatments and being at Brigham and Womens for months. My siblings and I would be at school most of the day and by the time we got home, we would do our daily routine. Both my parents in that time slot would be at the hospital all day and come home late, tired. No energy to do much and sometimes it was weeks spent in the hospital. Shoutout to my grandparents who were there for us and took care of us when they could until it was my responsibility to step up the time they moved to the south. That’s why it hurt so much, not getting to spend enough time with him. 

Freshman year went by quickly but It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I had to accept the truth. I was getting older and realizing that my family and I were on our own. It took time to finally accept the situation since it was spontaneous and I didn’t know the day I was massaging his legs would be the very last day I ever saw spoke to him. That was the downfall of my mental health where every night I would just grieve by looking at the pictures on my phone. How were the bills getting paid without my father’s life insurance? How was my mother so strong even though we were all alone? I felt alone. All that was around me was pity, something I didn’t want to be near. I felt as if there was no one who I could talk to about this since no one would understand what I was feeling. This occurred all the way to the time quarantine started and that is when everything started going online, even making friends. 

Being online at all times and talking to people is how I got over my grieving stage and started to get help from the people around me on how to navigate for the future. Another activity that helped was creating a tradition. This tradition involves taking a heart shaped balloon and writing a message on it for my father including recent events, accomplishments, goals, just about anything to talk about and releasing it into the air each year on the day he passed. More years went by and I had hope that things would all go well with my father not with us. I even got a tattoo in his handwriting done to ensure that part of him was still with me, if not by memory. Thank god I saved every single card I ever received back then. It was just the fact that my mother was all alone, coping to keep up with doing everything on her own that scared me. Doing things yourself and overthinking never helps in a situation like this. I had faith in my mom who also had faith in me that I would not let her down. That I will live a better life than the one she had to end up living to get through life. I am grateful to have met amazing people who helped me research on the ways to get my goals completed. I am in a better and faithful place now knowing that I can achieve all my dreams as well as still live a happy life with everything that has occurred. I am also grateful to have my family supporting me since it was hard for them all to move on. 

I wish I had taken my experience in a different, less sophisticated direction, but losing a parent when being only thirteen was not on my list for the future. Nowadays with different diseases such as coronavirus and HMPV, many families are losing loved ones and it has started impacting the world greatly and to stick together as one. I feel bad for the people I know who have lost people due to this virus but at the same time I feel useful being there for them since I have gone through a similar situation. Now that it has been almost seven years, I feel like I have overcome the situation well since I don’t get emotionally affected when people talk about their dads like I used to before. I don’t get bad anxiety when it comes to the topic either. Sometimes talking about him gets hard since it’s reliving those memories and the tragic times. But whenever I think about my future, I think of all the opportunities I have and will continue to reflect on since it was what he would have wanted me to do. The day I achieve this goal, I know that it would have all been worth the grief, stress, chaos since I got through it.