Grief is hard. Really fucking hard. And unpredictable. And unnavigable. Some grief is immediate while some grief lingers, festering under the surface undetected by you or anyone else. It’s not easily defined and in my case, it erupted as anger on a drive home from work.
A kid at work once asked me when I thought you crossed the threshold into adulthood. They asked me if it was when you had bills, when you had a job or graduated, when you got your own place. All these things that society seems to deem as the steps to a normal, successful life. I told them that these things never made me feel more adult. They were all just things we had to do to survive. Then I uttered these crushing words, “losing a parent”…
My dad grew up poor, poorer than I can imagine. He used to tell me stories about picking cotton as a small child to make ends meet, how he didn’t have shoes for school, how he learned to play basketball in a field where a peach basket was nailed to a tree. He told me stories about his dad. Rarely. I knew that my grandfather was an alcoholic. That he would drink all the family’s money or disappear for weeks or months. My dad told me once that his dad had come home drunker than drunk and attempted to shoot the kids. My dad hid in a closet. He lived in group homes. He was embarrassed when social workers pulled him from school to buy him clothes. These are all things I will never experience, things no one should experience. But my dad did. And my dad survived.
After graduating high school, my dad attended college. He was paying his way through school until his dad and step-mom spent his college money either on alcohol or bail money. I am fairly certain that as a poor, unenrolled kid in the 1960s, my dad knew that he would be drafted. It wasn’t hard then to see that poor kids from rural Arkansas would be drafted before rich ones. My dad enlisted into the Marine Corp and began a journey that would affect the rest of his life.
To really understand the depth of his journey, I requested VA records after my dad passed away. His death certificate was already sent to the VA since he had died in palliative care at the VA hospital. I sent an email as his next of kin with his information and was sent paper copies of where he enlisted, the day and time, his basic training, his time in country (Vietnam), and his medical records from when he was wounded. The Marines was the first time my dad encountered any person of color – Black men, Indigenous men, a short Puerto Rican who ultimately saved his life. In a short two years, he became brothers with men I would grow up with. Some of these men would be a constant, sending Christmas cards and talking for hours on late night phone calls. Some I would only meet once and never really know except by their absence.
To add to this grief, these details are all things I learned from my mom. I never had talks about Vietnam with my dad. He never expressed those moments of his life. I remember seeing him cry once at a Memorial Day service. And I remember how he would prepare me for reunions with his company…
“Don’t ask questions.”
Learning and hearing only added to my grief. All these stories that he never told. He used to say that he should write a book, that he was going to journal all these insights and memories he had. He would write about how the US failed their veterans. He would write about religion and being faced with questioning God when men could be laughing one second then dead the next. He would write about history and how the events of the past led us to today. But he was too late. I expected composition notebooks filled with his trademark handwriting. Instead I found receipts from 1975, books that I had sent him with notes in the covers, empty notebooks, and unused pens.
So as I drove home from work, my son sleeping in the backseat, rain and darkness from the sun setting far too quickly, I lost it.
It’s one of those moments that isn’t spurred by a memory. It’s more like a supercell thunderstorm, when the weight and the pressure of your environment create racing, violent, ominous clouds. Daycare was weighing on me. Working non-stop was weighing on me. The pandemic wall was weighing on me. And that’s all it took. In that single moment, the weight and pressure caused a torrent of uncontrollable tears. I was angry. Angry that I had to do this alone. Angry that I was raising a child on my own. Angry that promises had been broken. Angry that I was never allowed to grieve. Angry that I had missed so much with my dad.
My grief became grieving everything – death, emotional and psychological abuse, a failed marriage, maidenhood vs motherhood, a broken van, closing my business, the life I thought I would have. I know this sounds a tad dramatic, but in that moment it was very real. And valid. I don’t think we realize that the plans and life we envision for ourselves can also die. We are then forced to rebirth a new life, and sometimes it’s a chaotic birth.
In the past, whenever I stumbled or struggled, I leaned on my dad. If I had wild ideas or big plans or if I was proud of myself – I called him. Even as he began chemotherapy, he answered my calls and responded to my emails. Even when he entered hospice, he was there until he wasn’t.
I like to believe that my dad cleared the fog of fentanyl the day Stone and I showed up at the hospital, as if he had held on long enough to say goodbye. Stone was so tiny, only a few weeks old. I spent most of my time nursing or rocking him. The nurses had been waiting for me, probably enduring hours of stories about my childhood and then adulthood. They knew exactly who I was when I walked through the automated glass doors. In those final moments with my dad, I recall such simple things – holding his hand, sitting Stone upright on his bed, brushing his hair with my fingers, just sitting next to him. The year after was spent in silence.
Now that I have had time to reconnect with myself and no longer be silent, I am allowing myself to grieve – this and all things that have come to an end. I know this process has no ending, and I’m sure I will have more moments to unpack. So while I unpack, I also remind myself that I don’t need to live there. I am lightening my load, removing unnecessary weight from my pack. And I get to choose what to take with me into the future. And that is both terrifying and liberating.
