When Death Become Us

Thirty-three years ago today my dad died at the losing end of a barroom brawl. I was nineteen at the time, he was forty-three.

He had just moved to Reno, changed his life and found love. He had stepped into the happiest I had seen him in my lifetime. I was looking forward to getting to know the man shown in the photo taken days before his death as I moved into adulthood.

It’s strange how the death of a loved one shifts who we are. Our sense of self, our reality, how we walk through the world and sometimes our core beliefs and values are irreversibly changed forever. Even after I think I have cried all the tears I have to cry, felt all the grief I have to feel, there are still days and moments my body and my nervous system remind me that I haven’t really forgotten. The emptiness where time stopped and our relationship froze forever is still there. It lives with me as a wound scabbed over and over as new layers of loss and healing come up and pass over the days, years, and now decades.

I tell myself I have grieved all the grief, but it’s actually not true. The part in my heart with his name on it still beats, still bleeds, and occasionally still cries and sometimes sobs. And yet I go on everyday usually without mention because we don’t live in a culture where we talk about the dead or the carried and sometimes buried sorrow. Instead, we move on while echoes of the loss show up in daily life, like seeing a dad and his adult kid on the beach, people talking about getting a text from their dad, visiting their dad, how annoying their dad is, the frustration of tending to an aged dad, father’s days, birthdays and so on. I watch and listen, of course, to hear and see the experience of others while silently acknowledging the still tender and scabbed over wound on my heart. Little things like not knowing what it’s like to get a text from my dad create a familiar yet uncomfortable dissonance.

When I can, I take the day off of work. Not to sit in my own sorrow but to give space for the reality that I quietly stifle in those micro-moments throughout the year in between anniversaries. I light a candle to call him near, listen to some music we loved together, share stories with his sister, my beloved aunt. I also take a beat to reflect on who I have become since he left. I wonder what he would think of the guy I have become and who he would have been if he was still here. Again, not to sit and wallow, but more to bring life back to the spirit of the love we shared.

This year, I am also acknowledging and challenging the subconscious beliefs I embedded within myself from the trauma of his abrupt departure that finding love and happiness meant my own end is near. That’s a topic for another time.

It’s no secret that as we age the losses in life start piling up. For me, my dad was the first big heart break in life. Since then, close friends, acquaintances, all grandparents, aunts I was close to, aunts I was not, more friends, eventually my estranged mother, and then a couple more friends most recently. Many from cancer, heart conditions, unknown reasons, alcoholism, and drug use. Most unexpected, few of old age or natural causes. It’s odd when the scales of those lost to death tip heavier than those lost to distance or not lost at all.

Eventually, death becomes us. First from the collective patchwork of scarred spots of all those we’ve loved, lost and carried in our hearts in our lifetime. Then, one day, when we finally go ourself and leave that tender spot in the hearts of those we’ve loved and left behind.

It’s the painful but beautiful circle of life and love.

I’d love to hear what you do to honor those tender spots of loss on your heart.

As always, please join the conversation below.