Grief Felt Like A Life Sentence: That’s Because It Is
I was always told that grief follows you for your whole life and has a weird way of morphing into other feelings and outlets. I was also, unfortunately, a teenager once, and I thought I knew it all and had total control of my feelings. I was convinced I was done grieving the death of my dad when I was seventeen years old because it happened when I was five. I was fixed and I needed no more help! Surely I was right. Right? Nope. Far from it.
For the first 13 years, the words “my dad died” were seldom uttered from my mouth. I was never separated from the 100 kids I attended school with from kindergarten to senior year of high school. The school counselor came into my class to speak to my fellow kindergarten classmates and let them know that I was not in that day because my dad collapsed in front of me and died suddenly. For years, everyone knew and others spoke for me. Teachers and classmates’ parents treated me like broken glass. They felt there was a need to tip-toe around me.
I have already felt and experienced more trauma in my life than kids my age won’t feel for years and years.
I felt like the furthest thing from broken for the first couple of years after his death. I had a blast at my dad’s funeral. Everyone I’ve ever known was in one place and they were all giving me gifts and so much attention. It was Christmas in April. I was in the basement of the funeral home coloring in a Pink Panther book that I was just given and I had those new fancy twistable colored pencils to draw with. I got brand new chalk that I used to draw on our walkway as people entered and exited our house for days. The cooler on the porch was always full of yummy home-cooked meals for months.
My kindergarten teachers came and brought the classroom stuffed animals for me to take home which were highly coveted by everyone and I got to skip the line for them. I didn’t have to do my homework if I didn’t feel like it. I got to eat lunch with an adult (the school’s psychiatrist) once a week when no one else in my class was allowed to. I was the coolest kid ever. Moving to college was the first time in my life when I was separated from the 100 kids I went to school with from kindergarten to senior year of high school.
When I went to college, no school counselor came into my class to speak to my classmates and give them the forewarning that my dad collapsed in front of me and died suddenly.
I was surrounded by people who did not know me. Also for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who had no idea my dad was dead. I was the keeper of all my personal information. I could deal out what I wanted people to know about me like cards. I got to hold back what I didn’t want them to know. I had never thought about the possibility of making someone else uncomfortable by talking about my dead dad.
The grieving process started all over again when I started college. I was at ground zero and felt all coping skills leave my body and brain. To be completely honest, I felt like I didn’t need coping skills until this moment. I had no idea if I actually liked listening to music by myself in my room or if that was something I heard in a healing circle once. I was so comfortable in my own bubble that I never considered what it would be like when I had to leave it.
In my second to last semester of college, I was in a class focused on public speaking and giving presentations. One of our assignments was to tell the story of a life-changing moment and deliver an unforgettable opening line. I have never seen the whites of so many eyes than when I got up there and started with, “I was looking at my father’s collapsed body on the ground outside my brother’s school. That was the last time I ever saw him.” After we give our presentations, there is a debriefing moment with mandatory feedback. One girl in my class mentioned that it was weird I was smiling during my speech when talking about the kind of man my father was. I thought it was natural to smile when talking about someone you love. According to her, it was not.
I called my Mom on my walk back to my apartment so I could tell her to get a load of this. I couldn’t pinpoint at the time why it bothered me so much. People at camp smile all the time when they talk about their loved ones. It is so normal. That’s when I made the connection. I have been so blessed in my grief journey to, for as long as I can remember, have Comfort Zone Camp and the bubble beside me and supporting me along the way. I never had to question if I was alone. It was normal to cry, laugh, and smile at the same time.
I had regularly gone to the young adult camps in Virginia every year. In my third year in attendance, I decided to push myself outside my personal comfort zone and say something really scary. It was a thought I’d had for a long time, probably years, and I was convinced that this would be the thing that no one else would relate to.
I was 22 when I learned I was not alone in my thoughts.
I said out loud for the first time ever that I do not think of my dad every day. In fact, I don’t know when I think about him. It’s a weird cycle of thinking about him a lot, and then not at all. It doesn’t mean I don’t love my Dad, or that I am actively forgetting his memory, I think it means that I am finally able to heal in a way that I wasn’t able to before.
When I think of my dad now, a smile comes before a tear.
I see him in a Bills win on a Sunday night, a good Jimmy Buffett song, a cup of hot black coffee, and a quiet snowy day. My dad is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He lives in me and my brothers as fifty percent of our genetic makeup, through the stories and memories my mom tells, and the moments in between when I wish I just had my dad again.
I will never be able to change the fact that I have a dead dad in this lifetime, but I don’t think it’s all bad. I learned that one day I could be 44 years old and not have another day on this earth. I hope when I reach that day I leave knowing every last conversation ended with “I love you” and I never had to wonder if I would be happy with how I used my time here.
By: Kate Hassenfratz
