The End of Grieving

Well, it has been a year. We have had our last “first” holiday without my dad. He was at our table last year at our Thanksgiving celebration, although he arrived in a wheelchair van and struggled to stay awake, he told me again and again how grateful he was that he could be there with us. Life was not normal for him, so the ability to be in places he had been umpteen times was ever more important to him. The hardest part for him was that while his mind was sharp, his body was failing, and it was very hard for him to accept. Not long after Thanksgiving, he agreed to enter hospice, all the while saying he was not ready to die, but it was only a matter of days later that he did. According to tradition, it is time to set mourning aside at the one year mark and move forward with your life. On the one hand, I am 100% in agreement with this plan—never forget, but life is for the living. My dad is for sure alive in my youngest grandchild, who races through the house with glee in a way that I could envision my father doing over eight decades earlier, but it is the reminders and the memories now. I will never again argue with my dad about what we do and do not agree about. I can never ask him what he thinks about something or what he would do—I have to figure it out based on what I know. I wasn’t prepared for how sad it was going to be to let go, but I am making progress on that. Here’s hoping the hardest part is behind me.