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I lost my best friend, my Dad, May 22, 2023. The emptiness, depression, loneliness, and the immense absence in my life is a battle I wake up to every day. My three sons help me every day but it’s not the same. I lost my person. So please know you’re never alone. You do have purpose even during the darkest times. If you ever get too lonely, come visit Rapid City. I’d take care of ya!
So hard. It’s like walking into a hundred glass walls of pain every day. You try to go through your normal life and then slam into something that triggers you remembering him and you grieve. You move on, but then slam into another. And grieve. And then move on, and slam, and grieve. It’s over and over and over. It gets hard to move forward because sometimes you are so exhausted by the grief and the pain you just want to stop moving. And when you’re in that low, especially when your father was someone that - it sounds like - you turned to for support, it just deepens the loss, because when you would turn to him, he is no longer there. It can turn into this kind of pain vortex that when you hurt, you are reminded of him, which reminds you of your loss, which makes the pain worse, and down and down it can suck you into despair. Losing someone that important, that close to you is so hard.
Man, grief is such a painful experience. A constant cycle of healing and then remembering and getting pulled right back to the pain. It’s like every morning you wake up and are freshly reminded of the loss. You can’t just pick up the phone to call, you can’t stop by or have dinner together. You’re still living doing all of the things you used to do together alone or with other people who might fill the hole a little bit, but aren’t exactly the right shape to fit just right. It’s so painful to lose and I imagine it’s especially painful to watch your sons grow up and not have your father be physically a part of it. Something that has always helped me with grief is thinking of legacy. What was the legacy your father left, and how can you carry that on everyday. Keeping his spirit alive can help you feel close even in loss. It’s so painful to lose, but it can be a little bit less painful if you are able to create something new and longstanding in your life to honor him. Sending you love friend <3
Words are not enough when it comes to losing someone so close to you, to lose your person. Grief forces you to compose, without being prepared, with the overwhelmingly loud silence of absence. As you said so well, each day becomes a battle, especially when it feels like waking up to the realization of this loss for the first time, over and over. I’ve personally never felt more challenged at my core than while navigating waves of grief, and learning to give a special place in my life to the absence that one’s disappearance created. It feels like an unwanted, burdening artifact that we are meant to live with while we long for the return of the person we love, even just for a minute. I hope that, through this process, you make sure to be as patient with yourself as possible. There is truly no right or wrong way to grieve, and ultimately this pain is all about the love that keeps being carried around. May your life be full of moments of joy that you will embrace for you, and in honor of your dad. <3
You do have purpose even during the darkest times. If you ever get too lonely, come visit Rapid City. I’d take care of ya! 