02/06/2024
Grief is complicated. It’s way more than getting used to a new world without your loved one in it. Probably the first phase is accepting the fact that my dad is not walking through front door any time soon or probably ever. It’s accepting that he is really gone from his physical world. Accepting that I can’t just pick up phone and call him. There won’t be any answer on his number. Getting busy with work helps with this.
Grief is also overcoming the guilt – guilt of not doing what I should have or could have done. The guilt of not doing enough of may be spending more money, spending more time, going to more doctors, more hospitals, getting more medicine, more diet – doing more that could have changed the outcome. And this guilt is so deep and strong that it doesn’t let you go back to normal. Two weeks ago, three months after my dad’s death, I got to a point when I did not cry every day. I thought I’m getting better. Then last week as my daughter was trying to make me feel light and was cracking jokes, I laughed. After a long time, I laughed where I could hear my laughter but literally in less than a minute, it changed to crying.
I felt like I’m doing a crime by laughing. I can’t laugh. I don’t deserve to be happy. How can I laugh when I lost my longest lasting relationship? When I lost my biggest champion and advocate. I lost my biggest well-wisher!
I know the next phase of grief will also be overcoming anger for people who were there with him and didn’t do enough. Feeling of bitterness for them will be extremely hard to overcome and probably will never go away.
It has been a journey for the last 3 and a half months and it’s just getting started. All this is in parallel with other life events of Prakshi’s high school graduation, picking a college for her, moving her to dorm, Kriti applying to med school and many other milestones that we have worked so hard as a family for past 18-20 years. And it seems like I’m not there for any of this. I don’t know how to be present.
I don’t know if I will ever be the same or normal.