Grief | Goingmyownway

Grief

My father wasn't a very talkative man. When he was proud of something I did, he never said a word, he never praised my qualities, to my great disappointment. But as soon as I couldn't hear him, he ran to his friends to tell them how proud he was. He was odd, in his own way. Tender, in his non conventional behavior.

Once he told me he believed I could do everything I wanted to. I could live anywhere and how I wished. In moments of crisis, I was often afraid, I doubt myself or I lost heart. But he was never worried about me. He knew I would have risen again and I would have found a way, no matter what the problem was. "Laura is Laura" he used to say to everyone but me. And that was it, there was no need for any more words.

Now he's not here anymore and in my rough moments I try to remind myself his words, the words that he just told me once, and the faith he had in his eyes when he gazed at me saying nothing. He never was talkative, but he was sincere and trustful. It's not necessary to say how much I miss him.

When he passed away I was mad at him. I thought it could have been different, he could have done otherwise. He threw away his life and he made us go through hell. I felt alone, lost, powerless, completely shattered. Even relieved, because at some point I hated him and finally it was over. And guilty. Because there were so many things I would have told him and I never did. Because of his shyness, the lack of communication, time or will.

Because my father never communicated through words.

I'm still here, I survived him, but since then I've had a pain in my chest to deal with, deep and bitter. There were so many things I could have done with him and we never did...there was always something more important, more urgent to him, and many people to do things for, but me. For a long time I thought I wasn’t his business. And he was exactly like me, same sensitivity, same delicacy of feelings, the person I'd always missed most, even when he was alive.

He never was there for me he just stared at me from the distance.

When you lose someone so important to you, the first reaction is to look for someone to blame. Even yourself. You feel overwhelmed and it seems the pain will never end I told my father for many nights after his death, crying and whispering to him the things I had never told him before. I grabbed, with obstinacy, everything that made me feel comfortable and safe. Even bad habits, work (at some point I was workaholic) and everything that could make my mind dull and help me to avoid to think. I acted like a coward for so long..
The day he died I was beside his bed, seeing him leave, and I wished to run away as fast as I could. And forget everything. Avoid the unbearable reality.

This heartbreaking experience brought up all the broken emotions about myself, all my failures, everything and everyone I had lost in life. I didn't trust myself anymore because of the anger I had towards my father. And the pain was still there, unheard. I was in fear of life, fear to go ahead. Trapped in my own mind by my own distorted and sore thoughts about myself.
Otherwise I was kind of comfortable because of the delusion of being able to control my own reality, even if it was hurtful and fake. I was trapped in the past, a past that could have been otherwise, a past that didn't exist anymore but still...I lived there instead of living in the present. Because I told myself I was happier then. Before I had hope, I had a choice. Reality, on the other hand, was hopeless.

Since I lost my father I haven't been the same person I used to be. Something in me changed forever. And I felt guilty again at some point because I wanted the pain just to stop, I wished to let him go. To survive him. He was gone, he wasn't there anymore. I had to leave, too.
And I had to start again from the beginning, to learn how to trust myself again, a little bit more every day. How to face the reality, a reality where he was lost to me. Where I was alone. But I treasured his words, and I felt he was still with me, maybe more than he had ever been before. He left me the legacy of myself. The responsability of taking care of my own happiness and achievements. Because as he trusted me I had to learn to trust myself. I had to discover myself, the person I became after the loss, a completely different one and I had to cope with things I never even thought to be able to do. Traveling, living abroad, learning new languages, being self-sufficient 10.000 miles from everyone and everything I’ve ever known.

And this is what I learnt: the discovery of yourself is endless and we change every single day according to the experience we go through. We're human beings, 'being' in the literal sense of 'becoming'. We can find the real us, the person we're now, if we dare to find new ways to nourish our soul and if we are open to everything that life is going to give us. But we have to let go of the blame and the fear.

Let the good things reach us again, beyond the pain, the fear, the anger.

Every loss, especially death, tells us everything has an end, and this tells us about our own mortality. And this is frigthening and shattering. But everything contributes to our growth, and the past has always to remind us how valuable the present is, this exact moment, and how to live in the present in the most valuable way and enjoy the simple fact that we’re alive. Once we have honored who's not here anymore, we shall once more honor ourselves, living now, and be grateful about the new day bringing hope and a new chance of happiness.

There's nothing above the power of healing. Be strong and protect hope and you will be a new person.

For me the pain is still there, maybe not so aching, and probably it will always be, but now everything happened has a kind of meaning to me in consideration of the person I am now and once more my father would be proud of me.