“There’s a club. The Dead Dads Club. And you can’t be in it until you’re in it. You can try to understand, you can sympathize. But until you feel that loss…”
Years ago, I remember sobbing while watching this particular Grey’s Anatomy episode. Emotionally gutting scenes never fail to trigger my waterworks {just ask my eleven and eight-year-old boys about me sobbing through the entire Moana movie in the theater … ‘so embarrassing mom!’}. Plus, my dad has always been one of the most important and influential people in my life, being both father and friend. Watching this scene, all those years ago, I couldn’t imagine ever losing him.
Until I did.
This past summer I helped my mom nurse my dad through hospice care as he battled an aggressive form of metastatic prostate cancer. As summer turned to early fall, we sat vigil by his bedside, eventually taking turns administering every-two-hour, round-the-clock morphine doses. One evening, just as the autumn leaves had begun to appear, my dad took his last breath in the family room of our home. We were all there – my mom, his beloved sister, my husband, and our three children – literally surrounding his sickbed in a circle of love, witnessing his passage from this life into the next.
And all of a sudden – just like that – my dad was gone. That night I became part of the Dead Dads Club. A club into which I never sought entry. A club that I wish didn’t exist for anyone, ever. But it does, and the harsh reality of membership is that there is a group of us who, simultaneously, have one foot in the door of the club, and another in the land of the living. And in the land of the living, life goes on and moves at its own, inherently quick pace, regardless of any loss that you may have personally suffered. In the land of the living, we’re expected to move on from our grief, to move forward with our lives without our loved ones by our sides.
I am moving on. I have to. Not just for me, but because I have three young children who are grappling with their own understanding of the loss of their cherished Papa, and their own forms of grief. I have my mom who, despite being one of the strongest women I know, needs her people.
I’m keeping busy {as much as the current pandemic allows}, and focusing on the positive. On the really tough days – like when a friend’s funeral triggered my extremely-close-to-the-surface emotions – I leaned in and was immediately bolstered by my village. In the really tough moments, my friends and family have picked me up, quietly refusing to let me fall.
But Thanksgiving is on the horizon. It’s not only the first major holiday that we will celebrate without my dad, it was his absolute favorite. So many wonderful memories and traditions surround Turkey Day in our family. Like our long-standing tradition of watching the original, black and white version of Miracle on 34th Street, eating takeout the night before the big day and meal-prepping as a family, my oldest son being taught how to dress a turkey by his Papa, or my dad beaming with pride while hosting a group of cherished guests around his Thanksgiving table.
I don’t think i’m ready to spend Thanksgiving as part of the Dead Dads Club. But in the land of the living, I have no choice but to move forward, regardless of how much I want to resist. no matter how much it might hurt to reflect on all my family has lost this year.
So, I forge on. We forge on. I know I’m not alone, and for that, I am profoundly thankful. And maybe that’s my silver lining. My dad was an incredibly social person. Very simply put, he loved people, and he loved to bring them together to celebrate. So, with one foot in the Dead Dads Club and one foot in the land of the living, I will do just that.
