Grief

Dad died 11 days ago. 11 days ago my "normal" fell apart. How did he go from being healthy with a cold to dead in a mere 6 weeks. What in the actual fuck. There wasn’t enough time. Okay, I realize that there isn’t ever enough time. But 6 weeks?

The past 11 days have been a rollercoaster of emotions. Grieving the loss of a father as a daddy’s girl is an interesting experience, especially when you add in the grief of a future lost... 

They say there are stages of grief. The number of stages varies depending on which model you look at. Some contain shock and some don’t. The most common has 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

Grief is considered to be a fluid route with consistent change. You may find yourself in denial, then feel a bout of anger and then slide back into denial. I think that is a bunch of shit. I don’t think that you experience one stage of grief in isolation. It isn’t a stoplight that you sit at for awhile before deciding to reverse to go back or put on the gas to go forward..

More appropriately, grief is a giant messed up game of twister. You find yourself with your right hand on anger, left foot twisted behind you to land on depression, left hand on bargaining with your head smack dab in the middle of denial all the while your right foot stretches as far as it can towards the farthest corner of the mat for acceptance. Before your know it your limbs are twisted and your head is weighing you down and suddenly you find yourself in a jumbled heap on the mat.

So you get up and you try again. Right hand on Bargaining. Left hand on Denial. Right foot on Anger and Left foot on Depression. This time your head reaches for acceptance but you find your heart bringing you back down to the mat into a mess of tears and heartache.

When does it stop? Every day you get up and you hope to spin the wheel to land on the perfect combination of moves that ultimately allows you to move towards acceptance. There is no specific end date.

What can help? Nothing. Time. Continuing to spin the wheel and picking yourself up off the mat and trying again. This is the only way to conquer grief.

As my dad has said throughout this whole journey through Cancerland - one day at a time.