In one month and one day, it'll be a whole year since my Dad died. (Long pause for effect). I usually aim to write between 700 and 900 words in each newsletter which feels in equal measure an intimidating number of words to dedicate to this and at the same time whimsically brief.
I’m not really sure yet how to feel but I do know I’ve been thinking about it all more often over the past few weeks. There hasn’t been a day yet that I haven’t thought about it. Sometimes it’s followed by tears. Ugly blubbering sobs. Sometimes it’s a passing memory, that floats by fleetingly just to say hello.
It’s watching TV shows or movies with a plot line about dads or death. It’s photos of women in white dresses walking down the aisle arm in arm with their dads. It’s everything I won’t have. Every conversation that can’t happen. A phone call that can’t be made. It’s acknowledging that I’m changing and the world is changing. Slowly but surely, life becomes more distant from the way in which my Dad last saw it.
Lapses of time are entwined with forgetting. Eventually, it will happen. Without being reminded through photos and home videos, the sharpness of the features in his face will start to blur. His walk, his stance even his voice will softly lose focus in my mind over the years.
I accept this. I accept it all, I really do. But to accept grief doesn’t mean it stops. It doesn't mean I stop thinking about it. I will continue to reprocess this loss throughout my life and the milestones still to come, both monumental and mundane. I’m not in a state of perpetual mourning. In many ways, I am the proudest I’ve ever been of myself over the past year. For the growth I’ve seen within myself. For giving myself more space to get things wrong. For trying. For starting to set better boundaries. I exist right now as a version of myself that I think is pretty alright. And that feels significant.
It should come as no surprise that I’ve written about it a lot in the last 11 months. Tens of thousands of words. Words are, after all, the best way I know how. I’ve written not just about my own experiences, but wider thoughts on loss too. I quickly realised the main outcome I hope to get from writing about this is actually to talk more about grief and loss.
I’m so grateful for everyone in my own support network. But as a society, we have a problem talking about death. Every single one of us will stare straight in the face of death across our lifetimes. Yet we shy away from loss. We dial up the formalities, bow our heads in ‘respect’ and get too scared to talk about things openly. I have hope this can change.
For us all to try and talk more openly I’m sharing a few things that have bought me comfort or validation. I know certain things that resonate with one person might not land the same with others. Seeing grief through the eyes of another and witnessing different perspectives is definitely a helpful place to start regardless.
Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, S15 BONUS EPISODE
Released in October 2022 on the day his memoir ‘A Heart That Works’ was published, Rob Delaney talks about the loss of his young son. There’s a particular moment when Rob speaks about telling one of his son’s nurses the news and describes her reaction. It’s so raw. I have a vivid memory of exactly what I was doing and where I was when I listened to this.Caroline O'Donoghue’s Sentimental in the City And Just Like That podcast, pt I
Dolly Alderton joined Carolin O’Donoghue on her Sentimental Garbage podcast to dissect Sex and The City and the spin-off And Just Like That as well. In episode 1 of And Just Like That, Carrie’s husband Big dies. On a Peleton no less. In the podcast, Dolly and Caroline talk about Big’s death with a big focus on how to support someone experiencing grief. I actually listened to this hours after my Dad died. It felt like divine intervention.Max Porter’s Grief is a Thing with Feathers book
I was given this to borrow also on the day he died. I waited a while before I read it. It’s quite hard to describe. It’s a chaotic explosion of words about grief. Profound moments with darkly comic undertones. It’s almost nonsensical. Much like trying to get your head around loss.Natasha Lunn’s Conversations on Love book, ‘How can we survive losing love’ section
Natasha Lunn explores the spectrum of love in this book and speaks to various different people about their relationships with romantic love, friendship love, familial love and also about loss. I really took a lot away from this final part of the book, especially in Natasha’s conversations with Stephen Grosz, Greg Wise, Gary Younge and Lisa Taddeo.
The other day, I started writing a poem too. ‘Grief lingers’ is what I started with. Then I made a big list of everything that grief is like and everything that lingers like grief. This was a first draft.
Grief lingers.
Like a mild cold in winter.
Looming grey clouds
On a summer's day.
When the argument has ended
And you think of something
To say.
Sour aftertaste
Of whisky…
Hopefully I’ll finish it one day. Or it could just be a draft forever and that would unfortunately be very on-brand.
Wanted to round off just to say this in itself has been quite cathartic. So much so I then second guessed myself on whether to actually share this or not. Would be quite the hypocrite if I said we all need to talk more and then decided not to, wouldn’t I? So thanks very much for lending me your ears.