the death of a parent can immobilize and inspire?
“Parent loss,” Safer writes, “is the most potent catalyst for change in middle age.” And because they have experienced so much of life by that point, these bereaved children can see their parents with more wisdom and greater understanding. (via LA times)
i am not middle-aged…not even close. neither is my baby brother…so i cannot help but feel that all of this is so wrong. or a very closed case with specific conditionals. someone in their 40s or 50s losing a parent is obviously going to feel and think differently, have different experiences or manage to construe such an experience into relief. or inspiration.
i, however, cannot.
there are no words that exist in the world that can sugar coat the pain and suffering of such a monstrously intense loss. granted, this is merely one person’s opinion in opposition to another opinion. but this safer woman is profiting from hers, turning sorrow into personal benefit and gain. that seems tawdry and cheap. low.
i can’t help feel that this is so wrong.
losing a parent has not been freeing or uplifting or anything but crushing devastation and pain. my daddy was a beautiful man: vastly imperfect, flawed, human, fiercely loyal, and everything i loved in the world. and now he’s gone. i spent all fall and winter watching him slowly slip away as his body rapidly failed him. he got weaker and smaller and raw. the strongest man i knew felled by a relentless sickness that ate him from the inside out.
and it was the most horrible thing i have ever seen, or experienced.
nowhere near the best thing that could ever happen to me. every day that passes by is one more day without him. it’s still so fresh and recent in my heart and mind i cannot imagine ever getting over it. i imagine my 12-year-old brother does not feel any liberation or joy in losing a father, either.
i got 25 years with my daddy and that was not nearly enough. not even close.
losing my daddy didn’t make me realize “i am an adult”, because i already was. am. i already am. being secure in who and what i am does not and did not require such a galvanizing and devastating loss. it did, however, have an irrevocable and massive impact on my life, there’s no denying that fact…but it hasn’t rejuvenated me, or inspired me to live my life the way i’ve always wanted. because my parents were not holding me back. my daddy was not a burden that kept me from making the choices i wanted in life. that would be such a disrespect to his memory, his legacy, and everything he’s taught me, everything he was and still is. and i’m not willing to do something like that, i won’t.
and at the end of the day, however you want to see it, i’m just a girl who misses her dad.
“the space between a woman on her own and a girl who needs her dad is very small, and the time since i’ve said good-bye is but a blink. distance and speed are never quite what they seem.”
