Why I’m still heartbroken over my father’s death nearly a decade on.

Yesterday marked 8 years since my father’s passing and I actually managed to go to his grave for the second time which was supremely emotional as it always feels so concrete that he’s not with us anymore.

I wrote this sort of messy stream of consciousness for Hate Zine for Luisa earlier this year for the Death issue and wanted to share it as I also feel we need to do more as a society to honour dying as it’s so mind-bendingly life altering.

I tried to write this piece for Hate about my father’s terminal illness and death several times. It was a bloody process getting these words to paper. I felt so raw writing this. My Dad and I had a very special connection and I loved and cherished him dearly. He died in 2011 to a brutal terminal illness, a toxic cocktail of heart disease and cancers. 

I was lucky enough to be able to care for him throughout his illnesses, constantly taking him to various hospitals to be brought back to life ~ he must have tried to die at least several times on my watch and I wouldn’t (couldn’t) let him go.

Thanks to some tough love from my family and a therapist who helped me navigate his illness and subsequent death, I had managed to be super present in the face of him dying. The truth is that all I had wanted to do initially was run, after being there when he was in a coma for 2 weeks, willing him to live. I don’t know how we coped as a family at the time. 

I don’t think death ever really leaves you. 

It’s a real taskmaster that makes you miss your loved ones relentlessly. Even though I know on some level my Dad is still around me, I’ve had to check that his spirit is living on in the next realm by speaking to psychic mediums. I always told him to leave me signs and funnily enough my very skeptical best friend even had a premonition :l: vision of him living in a house made of suns. I’ve also been with my shaman and he came through unexpectedly, engulfing me with his energy that I hadn’t felt since before his death, just not in his physical form. It brought me happy tears and comfort. 

At the time of his death, I wanted everything to stop.

When it didn’t, I found the world very cold and hard. I had just lost someone so precious, who was my world, so I willed the outside to just stop, to take a pause, to breathe so I could quietly appreciate everything he meant to me without the noise.

Culturally, I feel we need to reclaim community and offer a bereavement and grief period where family, friends and the ones that knew the deceased just surround you and cry and laugh and remembe‪r ‬the departed for a few weeks until you’ve adjusted to their physical being not being there. I missed all of the little things you take for granted like my Dad’s voice, his laugh, his smell. 

Even though he was terminal and I knew my Dad had 3 years to live, (he managed 4) it was still a shock when he went. I was there for his last breath. It’s like his soul waited for my sister and I to come back to the hospital before he moved on. I laughed with relief when he died as I was so happy he was free of his body, he was so trapped in illness. My sister crumbled and fell to the floor in floods of tears. 

Soon after, I felt lost. I projected onto every older male friend/client/family member I had. I looked to my fiancé to be more of a father figure. I craved my Dad’s unconditional love, his unwavering support and his incredible joie de vivre. 

As I write this now, I am in tears. I don’t think death ever leaves you. It changes you and you have to try and face it, in your own way. 

I don’t consciously think about my Dad and honour him enough. 

I always find it hard to really sit with my feelings and try and connect to him as I am still somewhat heartbroken. It’s unbelievable how many tears I’ve shed both during his illness and in the aftermath of his death. I have only been to his grave once. I feel compelled to go again but I don’t feel he is there in a way. 

It’s a complicated and very individual process this grief thing. It has so many layers. You think you’re over it but then you realise there’s always a residue. It’s taken me years to heal when I mistakenly thought I was at peace. What I had also failed to realise is the impact of his death on my life in a pragmatic way. 

The sense of loss has been immense and I haven’t felt motivated to start my own family. I think on some level his death has hit me harder than I ever thought it would. I guess it’s the inevitable process of loving someone so deeply. 

I don’t think you ever really get over death, you just try to get on with it and watch slowly as the open wounds turn into scars and become little pieces of you over time.