8 years

It’s been eight years since my dad died.

Eight years. That means I’ve lived a quarter of my life without my dad in it. It makes me think that one day I might have more years without him than with him. That is a really strange thought to have.

My dad was a good person; he had a good heart. One thing that many people didn’t know about him was that he did a lot of charity work. I love that this is something people didn’t know – it means he did it for the right reasons. Not for the recognition or the public appreciation, but because it was something he wanted to do. He was a good person for the sake of being a good person.

Every year I try to reflect on what has changed in my life since he’s been gone, and what has happened in the past year.

Today I would like to reflect on how fleeting life really is. My dad was 54 when he died. It is so hard to wrap my head around that – 54. The more years go by the more I realize how unbelievably young that is. And that my dad didn’t “seem” like the type of guy to die at 54. As if there is some kind of person who is supposed to die that young? I know that doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s like death that way.

Let’s shift to dinosaurs. How many millions of years ago did dinosaurs roam the earth? How many millions of years has the earth been around? How long has there been some form of life in the universe?

A lot, right? Let’s just go with a lot.

Now think about humans. It’s a feat to reach 100 years of age. 100, out of millions upon millions. That’s nothing. That is incomprehensibly insignificant. And that’s us. That’s our lives. We live and then we die and the world keeps going.

I went for a walk in the cemetery last weekend (because I’m weird and I like to do that…I’ll explain another time) and I looked at some of the oldest tombstones I could find there. These people died hundreds of years ago. Anyone who ever knew them died long ago. There is no one left on this earth that remembers the people marked by these stones. They remain untouched. No one plants flowers there, no one prays for them, no one would even notice if the stones were simply not there anymore.

And that’s us.

How fleeting is this thing called life? We are only one in 7 billion – insignificant in that one simple statistic. I picture a dot on a globe, as the camera zooms out to the solar system, then the galaxy, the universe… We’re nothing.

What am I learning from this? Life is short. Something I already knew, but something that I cannot stop from entering my mind over and over and over again. It’s short. I’m here now, but tomorrow I might not be. I could die on my way home tonight. The person I bought my coffee from this morning could die right now. There’s no way of knowing.

Life is short. Life is fleeting. There’s no time to settle. There’s no time to accept anything less than exactly what you want or deserve. I’m not using this as an excuse to be reckless – I’m not going to play Russian Roulette because meh, why not, we all die anyway. But I’m using it as a reason to live. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. I’m going to tell my sister I love her. I’m going to finish that novel. I’m going to say hi to strangers and no to bullshit. Because tomorrow I might not be able to.

Recently I began a friendship with someone – I don’t want to get into details. I met someone and we were talking and trying to maybe start something. I don’t know. It’s a weird time we live in, with a global lockdown shutting down possibilities of actually starting anything.

Again, I don’t want to get into details, but I hadn’t heard from them in a few days and assumed our conversation had just fizzled, as it does. It stung, due to the friendship we had started. After a few more days, I let curiosity get the best of me and I googled them. I found their obituary.

Shocking to say the least. I was not expecting to find the obituary of a 35 year old human who just weeks before had been full of life and promise and future. Just…gone.

I didn’t know how to feel. I felt like…I felt like I didn’t know how I was allowed to feel. I didn’t know them. Because of the state of the world right now, we had never met in person. We had shared details of our lives with each other, but how well can you really know someone without actually meeting them?

Whatever I felt, even though I still couldn’t determine how I felt, it was nothing compared to their mother or their sister and kids. I felt I didn’t deserve to be sad. I didn’t deserve to feel this heaviness in my chest. I wasn’t worthy of it.

Fuck that.

Seriously, fuck it. Who am I to decide how someone can react to death? Even if that someone is me.

So I took all of that pre-conceived judgement, the socially imposed rules of grief, the feelings of uncertainty…and put them in a box in the corner of my mind. Because you know what?

You are allowed to feel whatever you feel.

No one else can tell you how you should or shouldn’t feel. So I pushed all of that aside, and I really asked myself how I felt about this. And I felt grief.

I felt grief for this young person who would never fulfill their plans. All of the plans in their calendar would now never come to fruition. All the movies they wanted to see, they would never see. The movies they wanted to see and the parties they wanted to go to and the weddings they would have been part of…they would all still happen, but without them.

I felt grief for their family. One of the first things I learned about this person was how much they loved their family. And their family would never see them smile again. They’d never hear their laughter. They’d never even get to fight with them again, to raise their voices and even hate this person, just for a moment.

And I felt grief for myself. This was the hardest one to feel – to allow myself to feel. I was sad. I was sad for this friendship that never really had a chance. A friendship that could have been something more. I grieved for whatever it could have been.

This person wanted a family of their own – a dream that would never come to fruition. A life cut short is worthy of grief from any angle. Whether you are their best friend or if you know someone who knows someone who has met their mother. It’s a life. And it’s over. And that fucking sucks.

Sometimes my daughter gets sad that her grandpa is dead. My daughter never met my father, but still she grieves for him. I encourage this grief because it’s real. She didn’t have to know him to grieve him. She is grieving for the loss of a life, for my loss of a father, and for the idea that she never got to know her grandfather.

And that’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling about whatever situation – it’s okay. It is so, so, so important to know that whatever you’re feeling – you’re right. You are right to feel that way. You are allowed, you are entitled, you are justified.

So this year, that’s what I’m taking away from this reflection. Life is so incredibly short, and precious, and fragile. Don’t accept anything less than your worth. Don’t miss an opportunity to tell someone that they are important. Don’t stifle any feeling, ever. Wear your heart on your sleeve. And if you’re wearing a tank top, tattoo it on your arm.