Three Years Now...

[Daughter2010]

Hello fellow members,

My father passed away back in 2009 and this will be year 3 of my grief and my new reality.

I have learned many things and have learned to understand others in similar situations a lot more. This experience is so personal that when you hear about others going through similar trials it brings you back to where you were with your love one before he/she passed.

My grief is not as raw as in the beginning but it is still there. In my heart, inside me, in my mind, my soul.

My father was/is and will be the backbone of our family. I still can't believe he is no longer in earth.

At times I have difficulty understanding why he is not here. He passed away from Cancer, after being so healthy his entire life. I struggle to understand it.I accept it but I still have difficulty adapting to my new reality because I miss him so much, I wish I could have spent many more moments with him in these three years. My father was only 58 years old.

There are times that I cry inconsolably because there is nothing I can do to change my reality. I know I need to adapt to it and I try, I really try.

I also know I am not the first nor the last one to lose her father but even knowing that doesn't make it any easier on me. My father is such an inspiration and I simply wonder why he was taken so soon. I miss him dearly.

I have tried to put one foot in front of the other and will continue to do so, but at the same time my heart aches for my father.

I don't know when I will look at his passing in a new way. I have heard others say the day will come when you can remember your loved one and smile without feeling pain. I will not force anything, things will simply come when they should.

This life is certainly very short, and every minute of it must be lived fully. My life is forever changed and I am still trying to figure out how to move forward, how to envision my future without my father in it, physically present. I am not saying this do discourage others in their grief process because everyone is different. This simply describes what I am experiencing and feeling.

Is there a lesson to be learned when a loved one passes away? I have learned many things about grief, but for me my father's death happened way too soon or so I think, maybe that is why I am struggling to adapt.

All I know is that I remember my father every day, I miss him dearly, and he is in my thoughts and I wish I still had more time to show him how much he means to me. One thing I know, love never dies.

Thanks for listening,

-L

[Ron B.]

Good to hear from you Daughter2010. My time-line is the same as yours. A few hours from now will mark three years since my mother passed away.

I too have learned and grown and changed so much in these 3 years. It's hard for me to relate back to how I felt in those first months of my loss. I am disinclined to rehash all that raw emotional pain. But I still feel a need to work through my own grief. It helps when I read of the stories and ordeals of other people here.

My own cure, as best I can describe it, has to take refuge in the thought that my mom, and my father, are still with me. If only in my thoughts, memories, and sometimes my dreams. So much of who I am came directly out of them. My basic values about what's right and wrong, my personal character, and even my physical being is taken directly from them. In some ways they still live on in me. I believe with great conviction in their legacy. They were not perfect human beings, but they did so much that was right and good. They worked hard all their lives and made the best of their circumstances. They cared for me and gave selflessly so I could prosper. They set a standard for me which I now try to follow.

Most people would say my grief has healed after 3 years. And I think that's true for the most part. I no longer feel that raw crush of grief, which was so disabling and unspeakably painful. But I still do grieve, just differently. Instead of being thrashed about by strong emotions, like I was at the beginning, now memories of my mom can leave me very sad. And I still cry! Sometimes I feel compelled to seek out my own grief and face it more squarely. So I dig out family photo albums every few months, and I have digitized and restored hundreds of old photos for the rest of my family to view. And not just photos of my mom and dad. Some of these photos go back a hundred years, and help me think about who I am now and who my parents were.

I have become brave enough to post photos of my parents in visible places within my household. At the beginning I could not face thoughts or images of my parents without sharp emotional pain. Now the pain has softened, and other emotions are beginning to seep through in healthy ways. Still can hurt to look at my mom's photos, but I also get very positive emotion. I often feel glad and get a boost from her presence on my kitchen wall.

And for over a year now I have been experiencing a kind of flooding of memory. Thoughts of my mom often come to me completely out of the blue. I'll just be doing something or going somewhere, and poof! There's my mom in my thoughts. Some of my recollections are so vivid, that I relive the experience in some real way. I let this flood of feeling and memory flow over me as best I can. I think it is part of a process of healing. The good part of it is that I am able to tune into the positive emotion in memories of my mother. I can visualize my mother's smile or her mirth in a heartbeat. She is with me within a moment of thought. I'm no longer completely broken in pain. I feel the strength of her spirit, and that guides me well through most of my days.

Though I've tried to stand in others shoes here, I'm not able to do that very well at all. I can't really understand someone else's pain. Or prescribe cures.

I hope you heal well, Daughter2010, however that happens. Somehow the legacy of our parents will help us find our way.

Ron B.