The Ugly Stage of Grief

I was listening to a Whitney Cummings podcast a while ago where she was talking about the death of her parents, and she said a friend said something to her at the time that helped her: she told her not to even try to talk to anyone who hasn’t lost a parent in the next year/first year after their death.

It sounds dramatic, and is not always doable in reality, but I get it now. I remember it stuck with me for some reason. I have had friends lose their parents. Some of my friends when I was at school lost a parent very young, I had three close friends lose their mom at around the same age. I was always aware of the idea of the impact grief can have on life.

But it really is something you don’t understand until it happens to you. I read this EXCELLENT piece about the profound loneliness and abandonment feelings of grief by Victoria Peel-Yates this week.

It really nailed everything I am going through after the death of my dad. Just being a walking ball of emotions, and feeling like I have to keep it all in. I let it all out, to some extent, for the first few weeks.

But it seems endless still. I didn’t know I cared so much, and it is killing me that I feel like I have nowhere to put this or heal or find closure. I don’t know how to do that in my situation, after such a long estrangement from my Dad my feelings had become numb, occasionally I would be sad or mad but the truth is in some ways I had already buried him in my mind. But a psychological burying is far, far different from actual grief.

Do I go to a shaman? A medium? I found myself watching Tyler Henry videos on Youtube one night recently, me, a person who thinks most psychic/medium people are hucksters. It’s not that I don’t want to believe, I desperately do, but I also have this inbuilt bullshit radar.

But for some weird reason I became entranced by the golden-haired child-man, he seems so innocent and yes he is reading celebrities for money but idk man. I am desperate. I was in America at the same time he had a NY tour date and I legitimately considered it. I want to know that my dad is ok and in a better place and doesn’t hate me. I hate that I feel nothing in respect to his spirit being gone. Like I have no feeling other than pain and sadness when I think of him. And some anger. But no peace.

I am feeling utterly, completely alone in the feelings I am having. My Mom and I were sharing some of our grief together when I was over in America but it’s different for us since they split up many years ago. Some of our pain is the same but not all. He was my Dad, my only dad, and it feels like hardly any of my friends or family give a shit, real talk.

A Facebook condolence is about all you get these days if my experience is valid — I know much of my loneliness is due to most of my friends and family not knowing my dad, not having a funeral, AND the cherry on top of me living in another country.

But still. Not one person picked up the phone to call me at my Mom’s house. I’m talking the ride or dies. Only one has been in serious contact, probably the one I knew in my heart would always be there. I have received two condolence cards, it all feels like a bad dream at this point. I’m trying not to be bitter but it’s hard. I also kind of feel like it’s my penance for not being there for my Dad when he clearly needed me. Even though he didn’t let me know, I think I could have made a difference had I known the shape he was in.

I know I haven’t always been the best at being there for some of my friends who have gone through it either, but when you are in the dead parent’s club you expect certain people to step up. I guess it highlights the whole expat distance thing again.

My husband is doing his best but honestly men can only take so much sobbing. I know he is trying to step up and take many of the burdens of everyday life off my shoulders, I do appreciate him, but the truth is I really just want to be alone to be sad and not have to participate in the world in any meaningful way right now.

I feel like I sound super negative and ugly, but it’s where I’m at. I want the movie version of a parent’s death, where everyone rallies around and brings casseroles. Not whatever the hell this is. Being an only child it has occurred to me before now that this phase of my life is going to be extra hard, but I guess it didn’t occur to me that my Dad’s death would be so sudden, and upset me as much as it has.

I feel completely adrift, confused, lost, and alone. It’s hitting right as my 40-something midlife crisis was in a sort of lull. I know people lost some of their twenties, and their teens during the pandemic, we heard a lot about the deprived fun times of the youth. But what about the OLDS? Not even me. People like my dad, my mom. Life is so hucking short. It kills me my dad spent his last years on earth largely alone. I know it was his choice in many ways but it still feels rottenly heavy in my heart.

We went to his credit union and the teller said my dad was known to them, that he used to do nightly drop-offs when he was working. My dad was a memorable kind of guy, and this broke me. I started sobbing because a stranger remembered my dad, and I hadn’t seen him in so many years. It felt so fucking unfair.

We had to buy some food for the hotel fridge one night and we were going around what must have been his supermarket (we saw that he had eco bags from there) and it was such a nice supermarket and just thinking about him walking around there alone made me break down in the beer aisle like a child.

I hate myself a lot right now, I know it’s not fair on me but it’s where I’m at. I was a bad daughter in the end. Was he a bad/absent father for the most part once I grew up -yep, no question. Not to mention all of the childhood trauma. We children of alcoholics basically get a life sentence of trauma, I thought I had wiggled out of it for while I guess.

But the amount of memorabilia and preserved artifacts of my presence in his life in his apartment hurts my heart. I will never know why he didn’t bother to reach out, especially given how sick he was at the end.

It sucks, it’s just a black hole of sad right now. I know it will get better, some days I feel lighter, but anytime I think about it too long I’m back in the thick of it. Grief when an estranged parent dies is a mean beast, don’t let anyone tell you differently.

* My subtitle is a reference to the Van Morrison song "Did Ye Get Healed", for some reason (probably obvious) it's in a loop in my head.