Hey Huginn ^^
I’m so sorry to learn about your father. Being that close to a parent and then seeing them deteriorate right before your eyes is painful and utterly tragic. From what you have read of my February post, that was the same situation with my mom. I took care of her since she collapsed in December and she was always in pain. She lost like thirty or forty pounds in the span of three months because she hadn’t really eaten. Towards the end, she started to get her appetite back and it was so wonderful to see her enjoy her favorite foods again.
The most haunting part of it all, like you were saying about your dad and how he said he wasn’t afraid to die, my mom expressed something similar. Not so much that she wasn’t afraid to die but that she felt it. Since her dad was hospitalized since late October, and her health began to deteriorate by November, late December she said that maybe she is destined to go before him. I passed it off like she was talking crazy and that nothing of the sort was going to happen but then it did…I haven’t told that to my dad or brother or grandma, her mom. But it’s just scary how someone can know or feel death approaching them. Me, I just freak out that any bad feeling I get, I am about to die because I’m so terrified of it, after everything’s that happened.
I don’t really know what possessed you to look at my journal in the first place, lol. But your message here has been very enlightening and I thank you for just taking the time to post this. Whatever reaction you felt in reading my post about my mom and grandpa earlier on, I felt the same in learning about your father. All I know is that it never gets easy but I believe it will get easier.
I like your concept of this ‘beautiful sadness.’ When I think of my mom, I get very emotional but I think I’m all cried out. For the most part. Some days, I just completely lose it because it still doesn’t feel very real. It will be three months in five days since she passed away and I’m sad and also ashamed to say that I felt more sadness for her loss than of my grandpa’s. But he was hospitalized for three months before he was let go. I came to terms with his death long before the day his liver and kidney failed him, two vital organs need for any kind of meaningful and independent life and my grandpa, a man who could barely walk, was very big on retaining his independence. If he couldn’t have it, the last real vestige keeping him alive and with some purpose, he’d rather die. So I know he’s at peace. But my mom…it just came out of nowhere. I mean she didn’t even last a week in the hospital. It was just Tuesday and then five days later she was gone.
I think what kills me the most is that she couldn’t say goodbye. When they stabilized her after she went code blue, I think she was already gone, just her body was there. So it kills me every single day that I could hear her one last time, or just hear anything from her, before she went. When I said my goodbye to her, I was just talking to her body. I don’t think she knew, I don’t think she heard, despite what the doctor’s say and if she was pretty much brain dead at that point, she wouldn’t have understood, I don’t think.
It’s just really hard for me because my mom was everything to me, just like your dad was to you. She was the one person who truly understood me. I sometimes still feel like I am a stranger to my dad and brother because they never got me and I don’t think they ever will, no matter their best efforts. Goodness, I started crying again while writing this back to you. I’m sorry >.<
I’m sure in time I will start to remember both my mom and grandpa with lightness in my heart instead of heaviness, sadness and despair. I guess it will just take time.
Again, I’m so sorry for the loss of your dad. It’s never easy losing someone. My grandma has it the hardest out of all of us I think because it’s her husband and her first born child. My dad has it second hardest I think because he lost his mom the year before and now his wife, his ultimate strength. But I feel like I have it just as hard because my mom meant everything to me, more than anyone else, more than anything else. So I just feel more alone every day I have to live without her and I know it’s probably so silly since I have my dad, brother, my grandma, my boyfriend and all my friends but the void is still there and will likely be there forever. There were so many things my mom and dad planned together once I left home after finishing college. They were going to move back to California in the heart of the fresh produce area of Fresno and retire there, enjoy the fruits of the Golden State and be back in the state they truly loved. We’re going to spread her ashes in the Pacific Ocean when we can. My mom loved California and she wanted to go back. More than that, she wanted to go back to India where she’s from, where my entire family is from. But…some things just don’t happen like that.
The one thing I can’t accept is god’s plan. (I will never, ever capitalized the word god.) People say that it was her time and blah blah blah but I can’t accept that. It wasn’t her time. She was taken from me, she wasn’t called away. And like I said, I don’t believe in god and I certainly will never believe in god after this. If you can’t tell, I’m very angry about it all, lol.
I appreciate everything you have said, but all I can say in return is that it will take time. It will take time to think of her and my grandpa without heaviness and sadness in my heart and in a positive light, thinking of those memories of us all together. It will always take time. It’s never an easy thing to lose someone, especially someone you loved so, so, so much.
One day, I will think of them and not feel anger, sadness or heaviness. But I will feel happiness and true acceptance in knowing they both found peace. They were done with this world. I know that. But I can’t accept it just quite yet.
And for someone who said that English isn’t their first language, you have a lot better grammar than those whose first language is English. Bravo, Huginn ^^