My dad passed away about 6 months ago, in November. It was both sudden and an outcome I had long awaited. I told friends it was 80% relief, 10% grief, 10% anger. It was a strange, consuming, pervasive feeling that everything had changed, even though nothing in my day-to-day life had. I walked around wanting to tell everyone, though I had nothing in particular to tell them. I wanted to call my mom and sister and be together, but it’s not like I had anything to say, it just made things feel more real. The first few days, it felt like I couldn’t slow down enough to have a real feeling or to follow a real thought to another thought. I wondered if I was sad enough, for long enough, or if I was helpful enough.. Even after everyone says there’s no right way to handle something like this, I couldn’t help but feel like it was supposed to hit me in some elusive way I couldn’t figure out.

I didn’t have a real sense of guilt for how things turned out. I didn’t feel like I could have done anything about it. If anything, I felt happy that I had some good last memories with him. Most of our trips back to Tulsa, we wouldn’t see each other at all. But the last time I was in Oklahoma, I saw him twice a day for a week while giving him meals and ensuring he took his medication. And I felt, whether I really longed for it or not, that he was proud of me, that he liked me being there. For a moment, I really felt like things could turn around, like maybe they really could get better. It was the flame of a hope that I had put out years ago.

When his burial service came, we didn’t say a lot. We didn’t have a lot of stories to share. We didn’t cry a lot of tears. My mom lost her voice. We tended to our kids who were cold and needed naps.

My sister suggested we had done most of our processing and grieving while he was still alive. I think this was largely true for myself. On some random night 5 or so years ago, I weeped with Suzi on our living room couch at the sudden palpable recognition that my dad was never going to get better. I don’t remember it being brought on by anything. I had understood for probably at least 10 or 15 years at that point that things weren’t going to get better, but that night, I felt its weight.

When the day came for his burial service, I was lethargic. I slept as long as I could, I wanted to be alone, but it’s not like I had anything to do. Nothing was a sufficient distraction. I didn’t get ready on time. I thought “what if I just didn’t show up?” It took me a while to realize I just didn’t want to go. After all of this, it still sucked. I still didn’t want it to be real.

I didn’t say anything at the burial service. I wondered if I could do it honorably, and I wondered if I would regret not saying anything. The thing is… we had a complicated relationship. My dad was under a lot of pressure - I learned from other people that he grew up in a military family with strict standards, and when you grow up that way, it becomes part of you in ways that could take a lifetime to understand, much less change. I’m sure he felt like he let me down, and relationships can quickly spiral out of control, and that sort of shame and guilt can become debilitating. Sometimes, I’d go back to visit and he’d express sorrow, he’d express that things didn’t work out the way he wanted them to, and he’d ask if I would forgive him. I spent my first 20 years feeling angry, handicapped, invisible.. and I spent the rest in varying degrees of forgiveness, groaning that things ended up this way, wishing things were better, wishing together with - not against - my dad that things were different.