I’m not gonna lie, I don’t want to write this post as just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. Losing someone you love is so painful. There’s that old phrase “‘Tis better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all”. Well there are days when I think that’s a bunch of bull crap and I would rather have been all alone and lonely then have amazing people in my life die. In those moments God usually smacks me up side the head pretty fast and knocks me back into reality and reminds me of how grateful I really am to have loved so many people that are now gone. I’ve lost grandparents, a dear friend of mine and my husbands, aunts, an uncle, a cousin, and my own dad. I have grieved each one of these losses individually. Some I have grieved because the loss affected my own life so much and some I have grieved watching how the loss has affected others so close to me. Losing a loved one leaves a hole in your heart and an ache in your soul that does lessen a bit over time but that never goes away. Grieving the loss of my dad, who was my best friend, was definitely the hardest one for me to go through.
I began grieving the loss of my dad before he was even gone from this earth. When we first found out that he had cancer the doctors told us he had 1-5 years. I’m a glass half full kind of a girl so I truly believed with all my heart that we would get the full 5 years. Denial. There was no way I was going to accept only having one year left with my dad. As his cancer progressed and after he had had two strokes, we were just a year into his horrible cancer battle, and it was obvious we were at the end. I was still in denial clinging on to the five years I had so hoped for, I had so wanted, I so needed with my dad. I remember driving him home from the VA hospital in Palo Alto realizing that I was taking my dad home to die. It was so surreal. I still couldn’t believe that I wasn’t getting the five years the doctors said we could have. I had blocked out the one to five year phrase and had only been thinking about the five years. One year had never been an option in my mind. Five years gave me so much more time for so many more conversations. It gave my son time to grow up and have amazing memories with my dad to remember him by. It gave my daughters more time to continue making great memories with him. Five years gave us time, that I could accept. One year was not an option. One year was never on my radar. So when we lost my dad one year after he had been diagnosed with cancer I was distraught. I was in disbelief. I was in denial. This loss was a hard one for me to come to grips with. My dad was supposed to live until I was old and grey and watch my kids get married and meet his great-grandchildren. I wasn’t supposed to have to go through most of my adulthood without my dad. 34 years with him was just not long enough for me. I walked around for a very long time numb to the fact that he really was gone. A really long time.
I moved straight into guilt once the numbness started to wear off. The biggest thing that I struggled with was the fact that a few days before my dad died, when he was bedridden, in extreme pain, and basically comatose, I told him that it was okay for him to go. I told him that I would be okay. I gave him permission to die. I was being selfless. I hated seeing my dad in so much pain wasting away more and more each day. But, in this point of my grief I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to be selfish. I didn’t care if he would have been suffering at least I would have had him around to talk to and to hold his hand. (Yep, I was a 34 year old women who still loved to hold her daddy’s hand and who still called him daddy. Not ashamed.). I kept thinking that if I wouldn’t have given him permission to die he would still be alive today. I wished I would have never said it. Once again, this dumb redhead thought she was more powerful then God.
It took awhile for me to admit to my anger with my dad’s death because the only person that I was angry at was God. I thought that being angry at God was a huge sin so I kept shoving it down deep inside of me in hopes that it would go away. I couldn’t really be a Christian if I had so much anger at God. What a horrible person I must be. I just couldn’t come to terms with being angry at God. This was the God that I knew without a shadow of a doubt was sovereign and good and “He is allways in charge” (ask me about my tattoo and I’ll tell you the story). I knew He was the God who would never leave me nor forsake me. I knew in my heart and believed with all my heart all the truths about God so how could I possibly now be so angry at Him. I fought this anger for months before I came to the point that I could no longer fight it. I was lying in bed one night and the anger just came out. I yelled at God. I told Him how angry I was that on top of all the other crap He had put in my life (at this point I had a disabled child, a shattered marriage and my grandmother had just died 4 months before my dad) He had chosen to take my dad away as well. I told Him how unfair it was and how mean it was. It all just came pouring out like flood gates had been opened wide. I came to a point where everything I had been feeling had all been said and I just laid there sobbing, exhausted, in the still quietness. Do you know what I heard in the quietness? God softly spoke to me. He said, “Caroline, it’s okay to be angry at me. I understand. I can take it. I can handle it. I still love you, my child.” That was it. Those few words He said to me were full of more healing then I could have ever imagined. And you know what, it’s really hard to stay angry at someone who is okay with you being angry at them. My anger had all been released and with that came great peace and a deeper relationship with Christ.
For those of you who have lost a loved one, you know that it doesn’t take long for people to stop asking how you are and move on with their lives. We all do that. We all have our own lives to live, or own drama to attend to and it’s hard to remember that other people are suffering too. You would think I’d be better at this but I fail daily. I’ll admit it was hard for me to extend grace to people at first when they’d forget that my dad had just died. I specifically remember going to our Church’s Thanksgiving service the night before the first Thanksgiving without my dad, I had pretty much been crying the whole day not looking forward to our first major holidays without him. I was talking to someone who asked how my day was and I honestly responded, “Horrible”, to which she replied, “oh my gosh, are your kids driving you crazy, too?!”. I simply stated, “No, I’m just really struggling with getting through the holidays without my dad.” There was not much left to say after that so instead of standing in awkward silence I just walked away. That’s when I realized that people who haven’t been there just don’t get it. They can’t. But I could learn to extend grace to them just as I would hope people could do for me when I don’t get it. It’s hard when every one goes on with their lives and you are still stuck in grief. It’s really easy to just go crawl in a hole and hide and cry. That’s what I did and that’s when depression loomed over me. I was sad and I had every right to be. I didn’t want to be around happy people. I especially didn’t want to be around happy people who had dads. This was a healthy time of depression for me. It would come and go. Some days I would be perfectly happy and okay with life and then some days it would hit me like a ton of bricks and I just wanted to be alone and cry all day and I gave myself permission to do that. As time went on the depression decreased.
Year four after my dad’s death is when I finally accepted it. This was the hardest year for holidays and special events. The first year after my dad died we did every holiday completely different then we had done before. We didn’t do any of our traditions. Or goal was to just get through them and get them over with. Year two we eased back in to the traditions but still felt pretty numb. Year three we were back to doing everything how we had done it when my dad was alive but we had to have others fill in the blanks my dad left. Year four is when we (the we here is my mom, sister and I) realized that this really is the new normal and it will never be how it was before. It just kind of hits you like a bolt of lightening out of the blue. Year four was the hardest but it was also the most therapeutic. We cried way more tears and I think they were the last of my grieving process tears that I had. My dad was gone. This was not okay, but I knew that I was going to be okay. I still grieve him not being here. That will never go away. I still talk about him often and think about him daily. There’s still a hole in my heart and an ache in my soul that I know will be there until I get to Heaven but I have learned to live with them and grow from them and use them to speak to others in their grief.
Grief is hard but necessary after a loss. We have a choice to make in the midst of our grief. We can either use our time of grief to learn about ourselves and grow or we can choose to let it eat us alive and take away who we are. I have traveled both of those roads in my grief and can I tell you, from experience, that allowing it to help you grow and learn about yourself is a much better use of your time. You can come out on the other side of denial, anger, guilt, depression and acceptance a better person. You can come out on the other side of it all with the most amazing relationship with Christ if you choose to lean on Him and grow as you walk through grief. And remember, grief lasts a lifetime so continue to allow it to help you grow. If you are in the process of grief, please don’t do it alone. No one has to walk it alone. There is no need to walk it alone. Reach out to me, or to your pastor or to someone in your life who you know is a safe place. Take that step to have a community with you on your long, hard road.
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