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january 4, day 3

Hi Dad. It’s been three days since you passed. Since the minute it happened I started to think sentences in my head, a strange urge to write all of these thoughts down. I couldn’t manage anything tangible until today. 

It feels like a month, a year, an eternity. It’s just been three days.

I sat in your corner for a little while this morning. In brief moments I am starting to look through your stuff, wanting to find anything, everything I can. You wrote so much. You saved everything. It will take so long to go through it all, but I want to read every word. Every scrap of paper. I am so angry with myself for taking time for granted. For not sitting down and asking you everything. I never thought in a million years that this is how this year, this 2020, this nightmare would end. 

I found this little note I wrote to you when I was obviously very young. It gutted me.

I also found this little letter that you wrote to Ananda, your first cat with Mom, maybe right after she passed away? 

Mom and I are reading some of your words and unable to not connect them to your own passing. The way you write that the sun came out as you left the house after Ananda died. Well, the sun came out the morning your heart stopped beating. We couldn’t help but notice how beautiful of a day Saturday was. Sunday it even snowed, a gorgeous, sweet snow that covered every tree, that made the whole place sparkle. 

This morning I woke up early in searing pain. I remember your sweetness in the morning, something I looked forward to since it was so rare. You always made the coffee, the house was quiet, you would sometimes peek into my room, wearing that blue bathrobe of yours, asking if I wanted coffee. Or you’d leave the cup outside my room, waiting. You’d offer so many times to get up early to make me coffee if I was visiting and needed to get up early. I can’t believe now that I would often get annoyed at you for offering this, saying you didn’t need to do that, knowing how badly you sleep and how much you need to rest. 

Sometimes I’d wake up before you were done and I’d come downstairs. I think to be honest I was always a little excited when you weren’t up yet. The house is so quiet. Such a beautiful, peaceful quiet. I’d make the coffee and bring it up to you. I’d usually wake you up if you were asleep, or if you were up the smile on your face as I walked into the room. I’d sit with you, we play with Sully, sometimes I’d even get into the middle between you and Mom and just cuddle with you. You really did give the greatest hugs.

I’m realizing as I write this that this morning coffee ritual really means quite a lot to us. I know it’s a childhood memory that I cherish that I learned to make coffee before I could bear the taste of it. Just so that I could sneak downstairs in the morning, make it for you and Mom, and bring it upstairs, proud of myself and knowing you’d be proud of me too. Knowing how happy that moment would make you. 

Your sweetness was sadly not felt often in our home, especially in the past few years. In your own torture, it was hard to find and experience. But there are so many little things that always came through, and I need to work to remember these as much as it hurts. But those mornings with coffee were so often sweet and beautiful. The many times you’d say something stupid, the intense laughter that it would raise in Mom, and then me. You laughed at yourself too, your own jokes, ridiculous. 

Your bathrobe is hanging in the downstairs bathroom. I can’t bare to touch it yet. 

There are so many thoughts that run through my head, so many moments, and they are gone the moment I try to write them down. An internal dialogue, like I should be walking around recording myself. 

You were so sentimental, so open with your words and thoughts and heart, at least to yourself and in your writing. I was often embarrassed by your sentimentality, of course now it brings me to tears. Your openness in your writing was not always for the best, I know, but there is something so sweet and beautiful about it. I don’t know how to meet that openness. You wrote so much. Now I’m so grateful for all the words and the thoughts, the handwriting that will take me a long time to learn how to decipher. All of the thoughts I get to explore through the years. I hate that that is my only way to reach you now. 

january 5, day 4

This morning I think the word to use is numb. It started sometime in the late afternoon yesterday. Four weeks ago is the day you started feeling sick. I was angry that you both weren’t getting Covid tests, to the point where I didn’t even want to speak with you and Mom on the phone. I kept saying, you know what a cold feels like but you don’t know what Covid feels like. Stubborn. There’s no point though in thinking about that now. Three weeks ago our lives changed forever. I call mom only to hear her panic as she tells me you have Covid and she’s driving you the hospital. Only a few days later you’re in the ICU. Just over a week after that you’re on a ventilator. 

At first it was shock and fear. Then an agony that I didn’t know possible. An overwhelming anxiety and sadness, my heart beating so fast, so loudly, I hated to feel and hear it. And just like that, four days ago now, you were gone. You are gone. Time moved at a new pace these past few days. The grief is almost unbearable. Yesterday morning after the depth of the memory of you and your bathrobe and your morning coffee, I was inconsolable. I talked to Mom, through the tears and the gasps, angry at myself for everything I didn’t do to try and save you. 

It helps to be busy, I guess. The hundreds of kind words and shared support from people, trying to respond to people, trying to stay on top of things, little things, big things, thinking about words. Wanting to not let this idea to write it all down go. At some point I realized that I wasn’t in so much pain in that moment, there I was feeling a sense of calm. But maybe now I think that it is some type of numbness. My eyes are burning from all the crying, my chest hurts. I guess it’s a defense mechanism. 

There are so many more people I need to respond to today. 

january 6, day 5

Today was the day of the Georgia Senate elections, and both democrats won. The Senate flipped, Dad. I saw the eagle fly by the house, close and swift and majestic. We spent the better part of the afternoon and well into the evening watching the news, watching the country change forever as racist white supremacists stormed the Capital building, egged on by Trump, and we watched as the police did little to nothing, as we sauced at the hypocrisy in comparison to the way Black and brown people have always been treated, the way the BLM movement was violently attacked by law enforcement this year. 

I missed you today, it was such a ridiculous and thrilling day in the book of U.S. politics. How I wish you could have been here to witness it. What would you have thought? 

january 7, day 6

Your anniversary with Mom. 32 years married, 45 years together. 

Today is also the day that we pick up your ashes.

It’s been harder to write, honestly yesterday I didn’t write at all. When I could barely see through the tears I felt maybe even a sentimental pull to write, like you have been writing for the past 23 years in your ‘morning pages’. In the past two days I’m admitting to feeling a sense of calm, maybe I wrote earlier that is is a numbness? Everyone says we grieve however we grieve, I am allowed to feel anything and everything, the rollercoaster will continue, a wave will come crashing down at some point. For the last two or three days at least, I feel a strange pull back to my life before this reality, this massive turning point, your shocking sickness and death. I feel an incredible guilt and confusion about this. 

This morning Mom and I spent some time talking about you, some of the more troubling and deeply sad aspects of you, of your marriage and relationship with Mom, a little with me but we talked about that less. There are so many things to say. There are so many emotions. There is a lot of anger. There is so much sadness. 

january 8, day 7

looking back. 

Today we left the house and returned to NYC. I’m sure I had so many things to say at the time, of course I don’t remember anything of it. It was a weird day, Mom was so stressed, so nervous about everything, her buzzing energy. I tried to stay calm, I know I need to be there for her. It’s almost a week. It still feels like it’s been a year. It’s not even been a week.

january 9-10, day 8 & 9

looking back. 

Honestly, I am just so exhausted. I can’t sleep really. Saturday night I was awake till almost 3 am, rewatching a stupid show one too many times, just trying to be numb. Of course the show is about family and parenthood. I’m not sure why this is what I’ve chosen to watch mindlessly. The minute I stopped it, I burst into tears. Heavy tears.

Sunday morning I managed to finally make up the violin lesson with Courtney. It was actually quite nice, and nice to focus on teaching again. I couldn’t help but with you were in the other room, listening to me teach. I knew that you did that over the spring and summer, I pretended to be slightly annoyed by it, or nonchalant when you went on about how great of a teacher I seemed to be. But to be honest, it made me happy to hear you talk about what you heard, how you felt. I wish you were in the other room on this day to, ready to come talk to me afterwards, to tell me how great a job I am doing.  

We’re telling the story over and over again, people want to know although are trying to be cautious about asking. It’s starting to feel rote. Hearing my mom tell the story again and again on the phone during my massage with K (bless her, honestly). I don’t know if I had the energy to feel anything in that moment, listening to you tell it again. And to A, and to K. 

Mom and I are starting to snip at each other a bit more, here and there. I keep trying to check myself, we’re both together and in our own heads, experiencing this in such different ways, from such different sides. At least we’re acknowledging it, apologizing afterwards. We’re talking a lot, she is so angry, so sad. She needs to talk about her loss, her sadness and isolation, how bad things actually were. I respect that, I want to be there, I want to listen. I am finding myself holding on to the good, being sentimental, not yet ready to go down the road of my own memories, my own anger. Even though right before you died, that’s often all I felt.

january 11, day 10

I didn’t write for three days. I don’t exactly know why, I couldn’t bring myself to do it for some reason. I’ll go back and fill in the memories as I have them. In the country I felt more able to look through your things, search for you amidst the objects, even though most of the time it made me cry. When we got to the city apartment, where most of your things are, I just shut down, I couldn’t bring myself to look through things. I would open your desk doors, close them again. Open them, close them. Shuffle through your pens, move things around. But I just couldn’t do it. You turned my little room into your office, I think in your morning pages you’d call it the “Lucy Office”, or something silly and slightly sentimental, as you do, and so I’m feeling overwhelmed and confused and slightly burdened. Not that I feel burdened by your presence, just, stuck. 

This morning I think I was dreaming something about you being in rehab, and I remember right before I woke up I had the sense that I needed to call you, I remember something about thinking that I needed to call you. And then I woke up, and I swear it took me a second to remember. This does feel like a bad dream. I want to wake up. I want to call you. “Hey Dad, I just called to say hi.”  

D has sent things to help me, and help you, transition. Set up an altar, she said. I haven’t been able to do this. The whole place is stuck. 

Today, at least, I started to look through the photos. There are so many photos. I am hoping to find letters, old writings, things to help piece you together. Again I am so mad to not have asked you more questions, to not have found a way to calmly talk to you and hear your stories. I look at pictures of you from when you were much younger, long before I was born. You are so familiar to me and yet so foreign. These are pictures of a father I didn’t know, a man I didn’t know, as if a stranger. 

I want to find things that I’m not sure exist. I’m wondering who I need to talk to to find out more. What about that pastor that you wrote so many letters to over the years? And your English teacher from college? Are there ways to get the letters that you wrote to them? Do you have any writings from your father? Your mother? I found the letters that Beth had sent you, you kept this part of your life from me for the most part. I am so sorry you had to go through this, had to lose this part of your family. I know that you and your sister reconnected, and hopefully forgave each other of various things (more you forgive her). I feel that it’s important to be in touch with her, maybe get to know her (although honestly, 22 years?) but I’m cautious. Do I bring this part up with her? Tell her it’s not my place to judge, just to connect through our love of you? Other members of your family? I should call C tomorrow. 

I asked Mom how you knew that your father, Grandpa Ray, was gay, apparently she said that you found out from your cousin B, and that Ray and B’s dad were having an affair? I really had no idea. I don’t know if I should ask B if he’d be willing to talk to me about this. You were so ashamed of all of this, you had only just started to talk to me about it. I wish I knew. 

In their words of condolences (I still really don’t like this word), many people have found it important to mention how much you loved me. I look through your morning pages, still not with much depth or energy, and I find so many moments of your telling me that you love me. Mom tells me how much you loved me, how much I was the light and joy of your life. I know that I was loved, that I am loved. I know this. My sadness is not only in my loss of this connection with you, this gorgeous love that I do know you had (have?) for me, but also the knowledge of how unable you were to share that with yourself, with Mom, with me? I don’t think I know how to talk about this yet. I am experiencing the grief of your sadness. Of your selfishness, your pain, your inability to translate all of your kind words in your morning pages into actions. I am grieving the creativity and passion that you had in the life behind those early photographs that I saw in glimpses, that I didn’t ask you enough about. That I wish you could have had more of. 

Mom and I are running down the list of things that need to be done. Slowly, I think that packing up your stuff and going through it all will take all year, honestly. But to the bank, some of the bills, removing you, adding me. And so on. This feels so mundane. Going through the motions, it feels so odd. For the most part doing these things doesn’t make me cry, I really don’t understand that part. Although they all say it’s good to stay busy. And I just sit in this desk chair here in this tiny room so full of your thoughts, and I just spin and spin. 

Walking has been the saving grace. Nala still needs to go out, to explore and smell. Today we walked for almost five miles. Grateful to S for meeting us and walking. We barely talked about you, about the absolutely shit that this is, about how horrific this is. We talked as if we were meeting on a normal day to catch up, as we always do, as if nothing had changed. Of course she said how sorry she was, she asked a few questions, but for the most part we just played the part, I listened to her updates. It was nice. 

january 12-28, day 10-26 

I’m losing steam, I’m not writing as much anymore. The silence is becoming defining. It will take a while but slowly memories get pieced together, written here in snippets when they come up.

I was in NYC with Mom until about January 19 and then I came back to Boston. I immediately tried to rearrange my room. The excuse was that I needed to fit the piano back in. The real reason was to find another way to avoid sitting in silence, to avoid being with myself. Having tasks, having something to do. But things that are seemingly mindless.  

january 29, day 27

Well. I guess I haven’t been here in this headspace for a while, Dad. I guess I don’t have that same ability to stick to this writing thing as you always did. Every day these past two weeks or so I’ve been composing letters to you in my head, there’s no doubt. But I found some excuse not to write, or the inertia just became to great. So I think today, doing this is going to be hard, disjointed. All of those words I had in my head that I thought were the best way to express what I was feeling are gone. I can’t believe that it will be a month tomorrow. 

None of it makes any sense right now. Today is the end of the first week of school. I don’t know what I’m doing there, or why I’m there. I am having trouble even thinking about my violin. The roller coaster I’ve always been on there is heavy now, and I feel nauseous. 

I’ve just started with a counselor there… I’ve asked about grief support, maybe a group? I joined this group on Facebook. I’m not sure if it’s comforting or if it makes things worse. Maybe I’ve gotten good at keeping things a bit bottled up, and then I start to read other peoples’ stories and I lose it. I’ve been thinking about sharing your story there. I’ve been wondering how to share your stories, how to memorialize you? Do we host a Zoom session for people? Do we write an obituary? Are those things necessary? You definitely won’t be forgotten, Dad. 

Mom mentioned to me at some point over the last few weeks that someone told her after about two weeks “things start to feel a little normal again”. I’d say about two weeks after you went on the ventilator is when I started saying that I was feeling “numb”. That I just couldn’t cry anymore. It’s been up and down since, but how do we say that things feel normal again? Sure, I can function, sometimes. But then I remember, I wonder why I’m trying to feel normal after the cruelty of what has happened. If I smile and laugh in a conversation, I stop and wonder why I’m doing that. Are people wondering how to interact around me? Do I act “normal”? Do I stop talking about what happened? Do I try and really be public about it? Do I use this experience to get engaged somehow? There’s a lot of feelings and questions of what should I do. And most of the time all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry. 

Over the past few weeks I’ve had tiny moments like the one I had a while back, where for the tiniest of moments I think you’re still alive, that I should call you to say hi. Like when I’m driving, since I would always call you then. Every time the hurt is just as big, when I remember. 

It’s so cold here today. The wind has been so vocal all night, and this morning as I sit here with coffee. Trying to force myself to write again. 

I pulled out my huge plastic bin of empty notebooks the other day, Dad. I’m just like you. Well, maybe not as bad, yet. I’m trying to give them away. But in this process, you know there was this moment where I wanted to get a new bullet journal, instead of trying to just keeping going with my old one. Because this year changed everything. Everything. I’ve always felt that the start of a notebook at a certain time was important, carried weight. But I didn’t need to spend $20 on a new notebook, so I just found a way to make that middle page new again. So I was looking through the pages, and found the pencil scribbles of the conversation I had with J when they first told us they wanted to send you to the ICU. That’s when we started to panic, hoping and preying that they wouldn’t need to put you on a ventilator.

We had no clue. We never thought this would happen. We still had hope. But deep down I was so scared. You were so scared. Everything little thing I see and touch… the before and after. January 2, the dividing line. 

D gifted me these beautiful aids for this process of grief, to help you. I haven’t been able to do it yet. I sort of started to build an ‘altar’ to you. I want to burn the incense and be intentional. To wonder about this question of transition, of where you may be. Instead I sit in stubborn silence, finding every tiny little thing to do to procrastinate, to fill the void. Cleaning up the house. Rearranging a drawer. Looking at dogs. It’s just what you would do. 

I keep wondering if I should post in this group. 

I feel like there is so much to do. 

This is a good start for today. For getting back to you, to this space. Help me keep going?

I love you so much, Dad. 

january 30, day 28

the days with nothing to say mean just as much.

january 31, day 29

I’ve tried and failed for yet another day to get any work done. I gave up this time, put new sheets on my bed and am sitting here writing. Listening to the odd buzz that the light by my bed has started to make, the creaks of the heat through the base boards. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow, maybe we’ll even see a foot of snow. I’m thinking about the snow up at the house, was it the day after you died? It was so beautiful. The quiet of the trees, everything covered in snow. Everything glowing. It’ll never be the same.

Yesterday was one month. One month, Dad. I just can’t believe it. This week has been so hard. I’ve been flailing, unfocused, sad. All these little moments hit me, like a rubber band being snapped on my skin. You’re gone. You’re really gone. 

I had a long talk with Mom today. She’s trying to comfort me, telling me that you were almost 84, you had a long life. This doesn’t make it any easier. In my mind, we always had more time. You had more time, more years. Somehow you’d calm down, we would learn to work together, I would stop being defensive. Mom said that you just disappeared. That’s the first time we’ve used this word. It feels really true. Like, you just disappeared. 

I’ve been crying more today than I have in a while. I spent the last week burying myself in dogs, looking for dogs, imaging dogs, thinking about Nala, wishing for that energy, that distraction. Stressed about being in school and feeling completely numb to it all, and not knowing how to handle the work or move forward. Is this really the last semester? How did we get here? How did I get here?

I met this adorable puppy Dad, he would make you smile so much. I’m so overwhelmed and don’t really know what decision to make. Don’t know what is right or wrong. Don’t know how to move forward. I wish there was a way to know, to feel excited and not bogged down and overwhelmed by decisions, any decision (this isn’t completely about the dog…) What do you think? I just want to call you, to talk to you. I would give anything to even just argue with you over the phone right now, you asking me a question that you’ve asked a million times about your computer. If only. 

I want to have people to talk to, to relate to. I want to find support somehow. Grief counseling? Support groups? Online meetings? I know that I want help, want to find a way to connect with people who understand this pain, this unique horror. 

It feels like a lifetime, and it’s just been one month. And it’s the same words, over and over again.