Premature Grief

Sounds morbid, I know, but I can't get it out of my head; I'm struggling to grasp how one day he will be gone, and I will have never truly known him. He will have never truly known me. What is an acceptable way to mourn someone who should've been connected to you since birth- but wasn't? The only thing I'll have to remember him by is my own reflection: green eyes and a habit of stumbling over my words when my brain fills up past its capacity. I only know that he does that, too, because my mother told me. She also told me we both talk with our hands an abnormal amount when we're angry, or excited. What I mean to say is that even my knowledge of him is not my own. I will never be able to tell funny stories about him or reminisce about father-daughter dances. His absence has led me to think of him as if he was an alien; a foreign being that came down to Earth for a blip in time, and then never returned. How do you mourn someone who, in your brain, never had the intention of staying on the same planet as you- even after subjecting you to carry around their DNA for the rest of your life? Where do you put the grief when the time comes? And more importantly, how do you stop thinking about it before it has even happened?

What happens if I go to the funeral and they ask me to say a few words? How do I go in front of a group of people who actually knew him and tell them that he had enough time, just not enough courage