I am giving myself till the end of the day to feel the anger, pain and frustration that has come to define the grieving process I am in. I lost my father quite recently and it has been an awful experience.
After the memorial ends at 5pm today I intend to let go of what I can even though I know I don’t have full control over it. I had little to do with it at all.
From the moment I learned of his passing I knew it would be a challenge due to the complicated family circumstance.
I’d been preparing for this transition for some years, both for health reasons and because I know that not being next of kin means I have little say in the matter. My time with my father was from a different era of his life and I am grateful for what it gave me. I love my father and always will.
I won’t lie about how much this experience has hurt. I was able to handle a few emotional body blows as I know my father and I have forgiven him a thousand times over for any pain and trauma as it got me here.
That my father struggled to forgive himself seemed a given to me and I intended to extend whatever grace was necessary to those who carried him through his final years.
Everyone experiences grief differently and strange flavors of hostility have indeed surprised me. Sending a living woman’s private erotica kept by her former husband to her daughter is a special kind of fucked up.
In grief, whatever one has to do to the villains you have built in your head is alright by me. It hurt but I don’t think I am hurting as much as someone who would do this. I am doing what I can to not become inflamed by it. These choices are what was deemed necessary.
I do however think we are unprepared for the many private painful emotional moments that will come with the fourth turning as baby boomers pass and their children across modern families grapple with what was broken and its costs.
I consider myself to be incredibly lucky in this regard as I knew it was coming. I am less sure we are prepared as a civilization for the pain that will arrive as more change and death arrives.