On Grief

So. My Dad died. That’s probably the first thing that’s important to know.

My Dad died within a month of a cancer diagnosis and I’m still struggling. It was so very quick. There wasn’t time to process the big “C” before he Fucking Left Us. I can’t imagine what it felt like for him and can only take my cues from the quiet and considered way in which he left this earthly plain.

Dad, whilst juiced- up on morphine chose a moment when his X wife had left the room and only his 3 children and one grandchild were present… to breathe out… This seizing of an opportune moment to die beside the ones you loved most in the world touches me greatly and is so very indicative of the way in which my Dad lived.

Dad didn’t squeeze my hand back the night before he died or show any indication that he was listening when I thanked him in the early hours of that morning for being the best most loved person I know. My Dad didn’t shy away from vulnerability and on that morning when we were all together again, my sister and brother; after a long time apart, he shared with us the most vulnerable moment of his life.

My Dad’s presence was mostly silent, in a good way. After all, is every thought really super necessary to say? The only thing I remember my Dad insisting on was that I dry his cooking knifes after I’d washed them and that I go to university. I did both of those things to varying degrees of success.

When Dad died there was a huge hole left in my life. It was almost perceptible. Emptiness stretched before me and below me. I couldn’t see above and as far as I was concerned there was no “above”. And if there were, then my Dad sure as hell, wouldn’t be there. He had better things to do than to float around, bodiless, checking on us. Nope. My Dad had gone to attend to more pressing matters, but try telling that to a grief counselor who is hell bent on offering you the kind of comfort she wraps herself in.

I couldn’t relate to the world anymore, if I stretched out my arm and placed my hand on life it felt cold. So I withdrew my hand and retreated deeper. Anyone in my life that couldn’t peer over the edge of my emptiness with me was relegated rather abruptly to the outskirts.

Death precipitates a kind of stock- take of friendships and intimate relationships and has a way of burning bridges or in my experience, blowing them up.

Death also draws your attention to life, something that I had taken for granted up until now. I had mistakenly assumed that life was my right and as such, had been living under the false notion that I’d accumulated years of credits just by existing, regardless of how I had misspent the years prior to this unexpected and life altering reckoning.

Right now, cooking fills me with comfort and considerable joy that links me to my Dad. However lately it has become a way to control shit around me so that someone else doesn’t die and so that I feel in control of myself particularly when I press up digitally against others. And by digitally I mean Internet dating.

So in a stupor of grief I began cooking. It seems so clichéd but it helped. I made curries with a base of three onions. Three onions buys you a lot of crying time. Soups that my Dad had shown me how to make that he remembered his grandmother would cook.

It took Dad a long time to figure out how his grandmother might have made her barley stew and the trick he said, was in the quantity of celery and parsley. I made cakes like no bodies business, lemon and yogurt cakes, carrot and upside down cakes and the cake that I made for Dad when he was in hospital and then again at his wake. Hummingbird Cake, but Dad called it “Angel Cake” that morphine and cream cheese icing casting beautiful images in his mind and in hindsight he couldn’t have been directionally closer to the truth.

And then there was the Internet dating…the first thing that caught my attention about the Lovely Man was his terrible photo. It sounds odd, but I thought at the time that any guy that posts a squinty looking into the sun and I- didn’t-really- think- this through- very- well kind of picture is all right by me. I also liked the grounded, steady stance of this man and he definitely didn’t sound like a wanker, in fact he seemed suitably self- conscious so I “liked him back”. In a virtual dating room of potential wankers- Head towards the nearest exit.

So we talked. We hung- out and over a couple of months, found ourselves in a new “room” a place in which we shared similar interests and thought of each other’s happiness before our own. I loved this new- found thing. After being single for so long, the flush of excitement and anticipation was delightful. It was the Angel Cake that tipped me over the edge that day at the Heidi Gallery with the Lovely Man when we stopped between Heidi One and Heidi Two for a cuppa. The Lovely Man ordered a coffee and a cake and mid- munching he said, “This hummingbird cake is delicious”. It was at this point that I could have reached out my hand towards the warmth but instead I clamed up and drank my coffee with tears rolling down my face.

I honestly don’t know what the Lovely Man thought about my propensity to cry at seemingly insignificant moments. There were quite a few of them…

I was trying so hard to be “together” to be a solid person and in this pursuit of well adjusted- ness I felt that I had to shove aside the part of me that had experienced something deeply life- changing.

Basically I was being a massive bullshit artist.

In hindsight, I think I should have talked more. I should have opened- up and trusted more or conversely not given a fuck what the reaction might be to the outpouring of grief I kept trying to contain and that seemed to escape from my eyes unwillingly, even during sleep. Either way I should have allowed myself to be vulnerable and honored my grief, let it’s colours wash over me. I should have grieved while I had the good fortune of arms to hold me.

But for now I cook and I cry, and I sleep. And then I do it all again the next day. I dream of my Dad and sometimes catch myself for just a precious second thinking that I can go visit him today... I understand now that sometimes grieving is to make the depth of love that is felt for a person visible and much like the labors of cooking it is best shared. I also get that Love is finding and honouring the quiet and true moments in life in which to be vulnerable; to be with a beloved when they die or just to simply cry over a piece of cake and to always, always not be a Wanker.