Complicated Grief. Father's Day.
Father's Day is kinda shitty when you're Father is dead, and then it is also powerful to remember, and beautiful to start re-interpreting it.
When one holiday points to a hole in my life and a space that my grief resides I cannot help but wonder about other people's gaps. I start looking into life for the grief most of us carry. What a hard day Father's and Mother's Day must be for people who want children.What must it be like to have other's celebrate what you most long for? What a hard day these days must be for people who don't like their Father's; who have been abused, neglected and torn apart?! What of the non-traditional families with many mothers or grandmothers with father's and grandfathers and uncles and whole troops of people who do the "fathering"? What about the Father who first starts with words like Step and Foster? And where the Father is sex assigned as a women? What of the people who don't know their father? Who cannot know their father? Who have no parents at all?
It's kind of amazing how much my amazing Father- and the loss of him in my life- points me into the griefs that others carry. Oh how a holiday like this makes me wants to wallow. I want to cry. I want to feel sorry for myself. I want to shout out, "stop posting pictures of your happy family on Facebook because I don't have a Father!" But jealousy of the glossy lives of Facebook isn't going to help
I had a father.
I did.
And he was great.
So so great.
And he launched me in a life to be a great, creative, compassionate person.
To make great choices.
(and so did my Mom)
And, to listen to the voices and stories of people who don't have it so great or so simple.
And so on this Father's Day...Thank you Dad.
When one holiday points to a hole in my life and a space that my grief resides I cannot help but wonder about other people's gaps. I start looking into life for the grief most of us carry. What a hard day Father's and Mother's Day must be for people who want children.What must it be like to have other's celebrate what you most long for? What a hard day these days must be for people who don't like their Father's; who have been abused, neglected and torn apart?! What of the non-traditional families with many mothers or grandmothers with father's and grandfathers and uncles and whole troops of people who do the "fathering"? What about the Father who first starts with words like Step and Foster? And where the Father is sex assigned as a women? What of the people who don't know their father? Who cannot know their father? Who have no parents at all?
It's kind of amazing how much my amazing Father- and the loss of him in my life- points me into the griefs that others carry. Oh how a holiday like this makes me wants to wallow. I want to cry. I want to feel sorry for myself. I want to shout out, "stop posting pictures of your happy family on Facebook because I don't have a Father!" But jealousy of the glossy lives of Facebook isn't going to help
I had a father.
I did.
And he was great.
So so great.
And he launched me in a life to be a great, creative, compassionate person.
To make great choices.
(and so did my Mom)
And, to listen to the voices and stories of people who don't have it so great or so simple.
And so on this Father's Day...Thank you Dad.
Exactly how I feel about Mother's Day, yet there I went and posted my dad/daughter pic yesterday. Grief sucks, and 13 years later it still hangs on, biting me in the butt at unexpected times. I miss my mom at 5:00 because I'd call her to ask what I should make for dinner. I wonder what she would think of her "now daughter" (13 years ago, I was living a different life).
ReplyDeleteGrief sucks!