Grieving a Loss that Doesn’t Feel Like One

My father giving his toast at our wedding: a fabricated story about Dave and a ladybug.

My father died unexpectedly yesterday (Sunday, July 21st).

As a licensed professional counselor, I understand intellectually that I’ll likely go through various iterations of grief. For now, I don’t feel much beyond relief… and guilt around the contents of that statement.

Because this past year has been beyond nightmarish as I grappled with how to temper the desire to be a good daughter to a shitty father.

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The Only Willing Relative

Last June, my father was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. He’d been estranged from my brother for over a decade, and had a tumultuous relationship with his sister for much of his life; my parents divorced in the early 1990’s, and the only other relative with whom he didn’t entirely burn a bridge was me.

But while that bridge wasn’t necessarily burned, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a stable one. It probably sat somewhere between the Balsa wood bridge I built in physics during high school (which held a whopping 12 pounds) and the Francis Scott Key just after impact but right before collapse. We didn’t have much of a relationship, to say the least.

He didn’t stick around to celebrate my Bat Mitzvah, and didn’t show up to see my theater performances, music recitals, or dance recitals. I don’t think he was at my college graduation (the fact that I’m not sure is probably telling), and he certainly didn’t attend my graduation ceremony for my master’s degree— because he was still going around telling people I went to UPenn when I had declined that offer for a better fit program. It’s like I had the potential to be good enough to warrant his attention, but still somehow continually fell short.

As a result, I’ve navigated my entire life with little expectation of him, so I figured being designated as Power of Attorney would be relatively smooth sailing. Spoiler: It hasn’t even come close to smooth sailing. Rather, it’s been a brutal storm that has left me battered (mentally and physically) and worn (emotionally).

But today it feels as though the storm is passing.

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Memories

It’s strange what the brain recalls in times of stress. Here are two of the most salient memories I have of him in this moment:

• Whenever I saw him, he always took my brother and me to the movies, so that he could take a nap. He lived in Las Vegas, so it felt like an adventure having to wind our way through one casino or another to find the theater. I loved that tradition, mostly because he made me laugh every time he bought the tickets: he used to ask for a senior discount (before he was eligible), and whenever the box office employee asked for ID, he’d fumble through his money clip, pull out a Barnes & Noble gift card, and slide it across the counter. He pretended to have dementia long before he actually did. Perhaps karma is indeed a bitch.

• After karate one evening, we went to the grocery store, where we ran into him. He had moved to CA, right up the road from us, and didn’t say a word; instead, we learned by happenstance because we crossed paths in the cereal aisle.

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I don’t really have the words quite yet to articulate what is swirling around my depleted brain. My father was funny, and very much a people-person. But he was also a narcissistic and violent asshole. I saw him more in the last 11 months than I had in each previous year of my life combined. I was also about to resign from being his PoA this week. There are definitely some conflicting and complex thoughts and emotions swirling about.

And while I don’t yet know how I actually feel about his passing, I do know that I woke up this morning feeling lighter than I have in the last year.

Update: I finally got around to writing about the whole experience in two (very different) follow-up pieces:

• Handling grief by running away to NYC for a month (Discovering Tranquility within Chaos)

• The absurd phone call informing me of his passing, navigating final wishes, and the cause of death (spoiler alert: bigotry, my friends!). Stay tuned for Larry David to use some of this as fodder. (Kiss My Ash)