Around 9:30pm tonight will mark 9 years that my dad hasn’t been in my life or in this world. I know it hasn’t been exactly 9 years, it could me more, it could be less, with how the Earth spins, leap years, and all that technical stuff, but that doesn’t matter when it comes to what happened on April 17th, 2007.
I lost my father to a brain tumor. At the time, we thought he was going to pull threw, but it was his time to go. It hurt. A lot. It still hurts. A LOT. When you lose someone close to you or maybe just someone in general, you never get over it. The pain just dulls and some days are better then others. Some days, you just want to curl up into a ball and disappear. Other days, you can stand strong and say “Hey, they’re gone, but they wouldn’t want me to be upset. They would want me to keep going.”
I didn’t know if I would actually write this out, but I feel like I have to, for myself and for people who have lost someone or who will lose someone. I don’t know what I want to say, so I’m just letting my fingers type. Sorry, for any typos.
It’s hard, so hard to lose someone. Whether they’re close to you or you only knew them for a minute. They were still in your life for a period of time, which makes them part of your life. If this were a perfect world, no one would lose anyone to disease or untimely deaths, but this world isn’t perfect. It can be unbearable cruel at times. Death knows no age, gender, race, etc. Death has a job to do and Death does it well.
It’s okay to grieve for as long a you want or need. I grieve in different ways each year on this date, or on my dad’s birthday, or even just randomly throughout the year. Next year, I might be a huge ball of tears or I might be strong enough to go out to dinner with my husband and tell people about my dad. Who knows? It’s okay to do what you feel you need to do and if that’s staying in bed for a while to just cry, that’s perfectly fine.
The important thing to remember is that people aren’t gone unless you let them be gone. There will always be memories and things to remind people of their existence. I have a plastic Asian dragon no my wall that I bought from an estate sale a couple weeks ago. I’m 100% sure the previous owner died before the things in his house were sold. That dragon is a continuation of his life. All the things that other people bought, whether they believe it or not, continue that man’s life. It might sound silly or childish to other people, but that’s what I believe. You only allow people to truly die, if you let them die.
I don’t expect people to read this, but thank you so much if you did. I just needed to get this out and let people know that it’s okay to grieve and it’s okay to feel what you feel when you lose someone. No one is truly gone.