25 Years Ago
25 years ago I was angry with my dad and ignored him completely before going to bed. No goodnight, no see you tomorrow. Nothing.
Early the next morning I would be shaken awake by my mom as she said the most surreal words I’ve ever heard:
Your dad is dead. Get up. Your dad is dead.
I remember hearing a gun shot in the middle of the night, but it had bled into my dream and become part of it. I never fully woke up. My entire body went numb at this realization.
The next moments were a blur of shock, getting dressed, wanting to see him but being corralled in my room by numerous police officers not trying to comfort me but question me.
“Did your parents fight often?”
“Did they love each other?”
“Was your father unhappy or depressed?”
“Would it be surprising for him to take his own life?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes.”
“No, it wouldn’t. He attempted it 6 months ago. I didn’t think he’d try it again.”
And afterward as I was being guided out of my home, there was a wall of people and police standing and blocking the view to my living room, preventing me entirely from catching one last glimpse of him. I remember desperately trying to see past the wall of humans who were very intentionally preventing me from doing so.
I profoundly regret ignoring him the night before he died, the last chance I’d ever have to see and speak to him in this life (it’s my biggest and most painful regret) and I regret that I did not insist on seeing him before being lead out of my own house that morning to “protect” me. I realize there were good intentions there but in every possible way, I got zero closure.
For 16 years of my life he was always there.
And then he was just….gone.
This weekend, exactly 25 years after that painful and formative event, I have been taking the 3 day intensive end-of-life doula training I mentioned in a previous post. I just want to express my gratitude as well as the deep fulfillment I feel at the possibility of helping those who are dying culminate their journey on this earth with a good death, and also maybe even help eliminate any potential regret and give their loved ones the closure that can so deeply help the process of grieving and letting go while they still have the chance….if I could be so lucky (and strong enough) to do such work.
One thing I know is true - as someone who has been drawn to death in some capacity since this loss, I feel like I have found my people and it has been a very cathartic weekend at the perfect moment. Grief doesn’t abate. It just transforms and there has been a lot of tears the last 3 days.
“You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are.”
