A Year of Firsts

For the majority of the last year, I've been seesawing between extreme joy and extreme sadness: feeling like a mess as I watch my young child move through all of his milestones in his first year of life, and coping with the unexpected loss of my own dad just a few short months after his birth. 

When I was prepping for my second child's birth, I wanted to do my postpartum differently.  I wanted to ask for more help.  I planned to hire more help.  I planned to rest more.  Planned to have more honest conversations with my partner.  I expected to look at my life after birth with experienced eyes and kinder expectations, all as a way to ease the grip postpartum depression may have on me if it came again. 

​I worked less.  I took time to enjoy my baby.  I helped my first born adjust to the changes in her life, and I thought things were going quite well. I had prepared, and I was ready to have a newborn in my life again.  

Last December, I got several phone calls one night that didn't wake me up.  And then I got one that did.  My sister, who was living in Vietnam was the first person to get word that our dad had been rushed to the hospital after a fall.   It was 2am.  He had already undergone surgery. 

By 6am  my 4-month-old baby boy and I were flying to the West Coast to say goodbye to my father.  

I have been saying goodbye to him since then. Milestones my son reaches are events he'll never see.  Holidays and traditions are now heavy with the shadow of his missed contributions.  His photos, belongings, and gifts are treasures and reminders of how he saw me, knew me, and loved me.    

​This year of firsts.  

I have found a great deal of comfort from not being scared of my grief.  What has been surprising is my grief has felt like a friend.   I have imagined grief to be a horrible and wicked part of death, but for me, it isn't.  And I don't know why.  And it's not that I'm not sad.  I am so sad.  I say this feels like friendship because I'm not hiding.  I'm not masking my life as it is now.  I'm not afraid to explore how low it will take me.  

My children have seen me cry huge sobs that come from amazing memories or waves of the enormity of his leaving.  And they have seen me laugh and tell stories of him that are silly or adventurous.  My grief really does feel like a seesaw, where the highs are surprising, and the lows are shattering, but both are never for very long.  It is so odd to rebound between the two so often.  

​But in the way many moms do, I have been doing what I need to do, as things come along.  My son has learned to crawl, walk, and now climb in the months since my dad died.  He has kept me on my toes, kept me present with his small and significant discoveries, and been the daily reminder that my time with him is precious and finite.  While I have not shielded my grief from children, I have also not irradicated any possibility of joy.  It has been a year of harsh juxtapositions with death and new life overlapping for me to untangle.  

​This year of first steps, first eulogies, first words, and first deep goodbyes is not a story I would have picked if I were to choose.  I do not wish it for anyone.  

But it is my story.  

I am trying to find ways to navigate life without one of my foundational pillars to offer support.  I am trying to heal.  I am trying to mourn.  I am trying to honor.  

As I was returning home after his funeral, I had a candid conversation with my dad on the flight.  My son was sleeping in my lap, and we were somewhere over Iowa, I think.  

​And I shared with him all the things I was afraid of and all the things I was going to miss, and all the stuff I wished I could have said to him before he left.  And he told me he loved me, and he was proud of me, and that I had hands and feet to do things I didn't even know were possible yet.  That my brain and my heart were incredible, and that he wasn't actually gone.  And I believed him. 

This year of first has been the beginning of a new relationship with myself, and the people I choose to let into my life.  I don't wish this story on anyone, but this year of firsts has given me an incredible amount of hope and purpose.  

My dad would have turned 77 today.  

He loved German chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce.  He was capable and lived in service to others, and gave the most incredible hugs.  His hands were like baseball mitts, and he enjoyed two-stepping and being a cowboy.  And he loved me.  And that love is still felt so well even now.  

It is a love that has taught me a new part of the power that comes as a parent.  We get to give our children an unconditional love for as long as they need it, even after we're gone.