Sometimes it's more like a loop than a line

Progress is not always a straight line forward, especially when it comes to dealing with my grief. Today is 8 months since my Dad passed away. I imagine there are people who think I should be "over it" by now. It might not make sense to others how I've been seemingly fine for most of the summer, but yesterday I spent the day feeling depressed and often tearing up.

Yesterday was the last day for my grief group. The topic we discussed was the acceptance stage of grieving. I think to some people acceptance means that it's okay with you. But actually it just means to accept that your loss is real and has altered your life. Without my Dad, my life is changed. I accept that. I also accept that he's really gone. Most of the time anyway.

7 months of therapy has provided me with some tools for coping. It's helped me to see that there is a process for grieving and what I am feeling is normal. I think I've been dealing with losing my Dad in a healthy way.

But all that doesn't stop me from feeling blindsided by the pain at times. I expect to hurt on days where I especially miss his presence. But it comes from unexpected places at times. A few days ago, my husband bought clementines. It's just a fruit. It shouldn't mean anything to me. But it does because my Dad loved them. Those little orange fruits sitting in our fruit bowl hurt me every time I walk past them. It's silly and it's something that's unique to me. I doubt that it even occurs to anyone else in my household that this might bother me.

It's the little things that hurt and the bigger things too. Abby's birthday was this past weekend. Normally we would have celebrated her birthday and my Dad's together. I felt his absence this weekend more than I have at any other birthday gathering we've had in 2010.

As I look around my house cataloging my "to-do list", I think of the things I would have asked his advice about or those that he would have helped me with. I realize how much I relied on him for those things. I might not have enjoyed his advice before as he quite often blurred the line between helpful and bossy. But what I wouldn't give him to hear it now. I can hear him in my head as I look up at our living room ceiling "Did ya paint that ceiling yet?". As I walk down the stairs to the garage and notice some drywall damage I hear him say "That'll probably need two coats of spackle and make sure you sand it good". When I know I have a bunch of phone calls to make, I hear him say "Call 'em at 10. They're awake, but they're not thinking about lunch yet".

I have a bank of Dad's advice in my head to draw from when the expected happens, but what about the unexpected? What about when I feel lost? My Dad's role in my life was to fix things. He fixed my problems whether they were damaged drywall, stupid decisions I made, or times when I lost my way. I always knew I could call him up or just stand by him when he worked on a project and get his advice.

Right now I feel lost and I can't ask Dad what to do. I can't get the kind of advice he gave me from anyone else. And that compounds feeling lost with the feeling of loss. The first of everything without Dad has been hard this year, but time coming up is especially painful for me. A week from today is Dad's birthday. I can't believe that he won't be here to celebrate it with us. The time is coming up when only a year ago he was visibly sick. He was losing his voice. He looked different. He acted different. He started to not be the Daddy I always knew. That time was horribly painful for me. Probably too painful to think about a whole lot until now.

So while from the outside it might not make sense why after a couple months of doing seemingly well, I'm suddenly not doing well anymore....this is the reason why. I feel like hiding. I feel like ignoring my phone when it rings. I feel like not logging in. I feel like laying in bed crying instead of hanging out with friends. I'm going to give myself permission to cry when I need to. To cancel plans when I can't put on a smile for everyone else. To spend time journaling rather than folding laundry. Because I'm still working through my grief. I'm still going through the process...even though my progress is not something that moves in a straight line.