Give me the time I need to grieve

In a phone conversation with my sister, I acknowledged that there are still certain people I cannot talk to without breaking down and crying. They are those few who remind me of our father, not because they necessarily spent significant time with him. It can be as simple as a way of placing a word in a phrase or an attitude towards life’s usual challenges. It might be a generosity of spirit or an unselfish heart.

It has been nearly two years since I lost my father, yet when my husband and I are out to dinner with companions at a local restaurant that offers rack of lamb as a menu option, he looks across the table to me.

“You are thinking of your dad, aren’t you?” Ah, how he treads the paths of my mental meanderings, even with my head bowed, glasses on, studying the choices. It is one of those days when it wouldn’t matter if two decades had passed since his passing; I am powerless to dam the flood of tears and stab of heartache because he is no longer alive to root me to the ground I walk on. After Mama passed away, there was Daddy to focus on and care for; now no one remains whose face I gaze upon and see my own.

When I share my story with a group of retirement home residents for whom I manage a book club, one woman looks at me askance while the others look down, either unsympathetic or unwilling to cater to such nonsense after all this time.

“It’s been how long since he died?” she quizzes, her eyebrow raised. “You need to move on—death is simply part of life.”

I agree and disagree: Death is part of life, but I do not need to stride away from these memories. In many other cultures, I could still wear black. I might hide out in my home with family who understand. I would have permission to feel whatever I feel, given the day or the hour. Not here, not now. In our frenetic paced, with ever independent pride, I am expected to shelf my first 56 years in the library of life, check out a memory now and then, return it, ready and anxious for the next chapter.

It occurs to me that families are so broken in so many ways that for some, the absence of parents may be not altogether unwelcome. The disappearance, for those who have been abused or left unforgiven, can open the prison bars and signal a freedom to be an adult at last. But what is there for those of us who, despite having shouldered the responsibilities of adulthood with aplomb, never really cared to “grow up” apart from the ones who carried us through an altogether nurturing childhood? And what do I have to prove by “dealing with it,” without them?

So I hide my continuing breakdowns because according to standards set by someone, somewhere unbeknownst to me, it has been long enough and I shouldn’t surrender to such emotional instability. I don’t have them every day, mind you, and by nature I am a positive and happy individual. I cherish grown children, adore a loving husband, and am grateful to God for the sturdy roof over my head during times of trouble. Still there are days. That’s a good thing. Remembering so it hurts reminds me just exactly who I am.