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it was the first anniversary of my dad’s death this week and i’m not a big dates guy but this seems like an appropriate time to have some thoughts
about it [thread]
about it [thread]
there is, i’ve realised, no coming to terms with it: it’s an incomprehensible and unfathomable injustice for which there are no answers. the best you can do is accept it and make some sort of peace with it.
i find it helps to understand it could be worse. it’s not fair but others have it more unfair. you can choose to see the absence of someone or acknowledge and value what they were. it’s better to do the latter but i think we all do both.
even so, things become normal surprisingly, almost alarmingly, quickly. they don’t return to normal, that “normal” is gone, but they find a new one. even grief quickly becomes mundane, banal.
at first i was more emotional then ever before but now i’m more numb. after the rawness of the immediate aftermath i think so much of my energy is still absorbed in processing the fact of it. other things seem to pass me by.
i still experience other joys, sadnesses, fulfilments, disappointments; but they don’t really register on some deeper level that’s still occupied with something else.
being broken up with recently was simply nothing. i knew it was coming, i dreaded it but, like falling in a dream, you brace for an impact that never comes. the ground rushes up to meet you but you pass through it, knowing on some level that it’s immaterial.
in some ways the experience has made me more determined but i’m also unfocused, my mind wanders in and out on its own schedule. i’m not sure if i’m ever getting it back.
i think about him every day still, which is strange because i can’t say i ever thought of him that often when he was alive, he simply was, like gravity. but now things seem to silently call his name: elo on the radio, putting the bins out, someone playing tennis...badly.
it’s funny the things from your parents you inherit. dad, amongst other things and amusingly for the father of a podcaster, always had a guy for everything: a logs guy, a car guy, a bees guy (seriously). now i am the keeper of these guys. the dude trustee.
often i find myself having to explain to one of them why dad isn’t calling them himself and they’re so shocked and wrong-footed that i find myself apologising for giving them such bad news. at that moment they’re more upset than i am. i just need the car fixed.
responsibility seems to be what it comes back to. mostly to mum, to soften this, to make it digestible. it’s a void i can’t fill, but i can stop her falling into it. i can’t be him, but i can make breakfast, get new tyres put on the car, call the logs guy. console the logs guy.
the scariest responsibility though, is the one to yourself, to process and heal and understand. i have no idea how long it will take, or if i have even started. it’s an ink black lake, you can’t see the bottom, only hope that you’ll touch it some day.
most days i try to be grateful. grateful that when people remember him to me it’s for some kindness he did them or a way he made them smile. he was always kind and that, ultimately, is the most you can be.
we were lucky to have known him, to have been loved. we mustn’t forget.
we were lucky to have known him, to have been loved. we mustn’t forget.
i will now go back to posting absolute piss-brained nonsense for another year
