The Waves of Grief
As a preface to this blog entry, I’d like to invite you to read this as you honour whatever emotions are coming up for you today. Whether you join me in grieving the loss of a father, or you find these words bring about reflections revolving the loss of another loved one, I invite you to hold space for whatever may be there.
Light a candle, or perhaps put on some music that resonates with those memories that are forever in your heart, immerse yourself in nature - do whatever your soul feels called to do, and walk with me as I talk about navigating loss, and the many emotions that ensue in its wake.
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Whoever you are, wherever this finds you, I hope you feel seen, heard, held and loved in whatever circumstances and emotions you and your big beautiful soul are present to.
Know, beautiful soul, that you are and never will be alone in this journey.
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It’s been 20 years and this day - Father’s Day - always shows up in different ways for me. Tears, joy, heartache, laughter, singing, dancing, weeping, and carnal screams have all been, and will continue to be a part of this process.
I was 9 when I lost my Father. Cancer. A word I was already all-too-familiar with. His diagnosis came not even a year after this beast of a disease had rocked my Mother’s world in a very unforgiving way. For my Dad though, the dreaded C-word came with less than an ounce of hope. Weeks, maybe months, the doctors told him. I remember the first time I was with him when he so nonchalantly told a few friends - “So, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m not going to be around much longer.” That was the first moment it really hit me. In that moment it wasn’t grief. I didn’t feel sadness. I wasn’t even angry, confused, frustrated, or any other namable emotion. What hit me was the feeling of not being able to feel at all. Numb - perhaps that’s the best way to describe it. All I know is, in that moment, I stood there on those 8 year old legs, staring at the counter below the til at K&W Audio as those words repeated themselves over and over in my head…
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m not going to be around much longer”
I don’t recall how my Dad’s friends responded. I remember bits and pieces of his vague explanation. “Cancer…..Pancreatic….Yeah, terminal. No, I don’t know how long…..It is what it is.”
My parents didn’t hide anything from me in the process of either of their battles. I was talked to as if I was another close friend and was shared with all of the details I asked to know, and all those they felt imperative to my processing of how this unforgiving disease would run its course through their bodies, and how it would ultimately turn each of our worlds upside down during the process.
Numb is the only way I can describe how I felt during most of my Mom’s battle and for long after my Dad’s. So many times I witnessed my Mom weep and felt immense guilt that I had zero urge to cry. So many times I heard my Dad speak about death like it was just another day in the life of Ken Connolly - dialogue that would now bring about a barrage of various emotions, but at the time, I didn’t feel any of them. I remember being so confused as to how I was supposed to feel. I remember so many nights hearing my Mom weep and thinking
“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I cry?”
I remember being in school - a vivid memory arises from a class being held in the library. I was giggling with a friend over something I can’t recall and a tap came from behind on my shoulder. It was my teacher, gesturing that there was someone on the phone and I needed to come with her. That someone was my Mom. My Dad was in Hospice at the time and it was one of the many moments we were told “this might be it.” I remember feeling an energy through that phone before my Mom even spoke. I felt resistance from my Dad - a white-knuckled death-grip on life, and a despair from my Mom that I will never be able to put into words. My Mom, choking back tears, said “Sarah, Daddy isn’t doing well. I’m going to put the phone up to Daddy’s ear. Tell him whatever’s on your heart and say what you want to say.”
I remember my teacher, Mrs. Boehm, weeping as I stood there with that phone against my ear, my Dad’s shallow breathing on the other end. “I love you Dad” was all I could say. And again, I felt numb. No tears flowed from my eyes. I felt no heaviness in my heart. I felt no urge to kick or scream or nervously laugh. Nothing.
I remember thinking:
“Mrs. Boehm must think something is wrong with me….Is there something wrong with me…?”
Looking back, I also remember in these moments that I felt as much resistance from within as I felt vibrating through that phone from my Father’s refusal to leave this world in that moment. I know now that there was a large part of me that very much so did feel all of the emotions - a part of my soul that kept them bottled up in this tiny little compartment because I felt I had to be strong...
I had to be strong for my Mom, who had already weathered a storm of her own.
I had to be strong for my friends, whose 8 & 9 year old selves had no idea what to do or say to me. Very often I remember wishing one of my friends would ask - before and after my Dad passed. I wanted to talk about him to someone my age, though that expectation alone is immense for someone who’s just learning to navigate the many intricacies of life as a growing and increasingly-independent human.
So I stayed numb. Numb but strong. Numb but “strong”...
My Dad did not pass after that phone call in the library. The memories between then and his death are a mixture of vibrant and all-but-absent blurs. I do know one thing for sure though; he waited. My Dad waited until my Mom and I were together one last time. She had spent nearly every waking hour and every night by his side at Hospice. Various other family members would spell her off at intervals I’m not entirely certain of, though I can venture to guess they were few and far between. I was in school and staying at “The Ranch” - an acreage that was the home of close family friends - my “Aunt,” “Uncle” and three “brothers”, none by blood but all very much by heart and soul, and all who helped me continue living life as a somewhat normal 9 year old. It was almost as if I was in a different world when I was there. On the Ranch we tore up the ground with the bikes and the quads, my undying love for horses flourished, I got dirt in my eyes, nose, and ears, but still shed no tears. All the while, my Dad fought a losing battle and my Mom did her best to keep her head above water.
It all seemed so fast. It seemed like one day my Mom had lost all her hair and laid post-chemo treatment with a face cloth on her forehead on the pull-out bed in the basement (the only place that was dark and cool enough to bring her an ounce of relief), throwing up relentlessly into a bedside bucket for hours on end, and the next day my dad was laying on the bathroom floor as my Mom yelled for me to call 911 - another moment I felt I just couldn’t do anything right.
My Dad being my Dad though, did nothing “on time,” including his departure from the physical world. He was given a “hopeful” 6 to 8 weeks at the time of his diagnosis. In true Ken Connolly fashion he knocked on Heaven’s door a casual 8 months later. I laugh hysterically as I write this because, no word of a lie, everyone who knew my Father used to tell him that events started hours before the necessary time of arrival. Dinner starts at 7? Tell Ken to be there by 5:30. My Dad did many things immaculately and with great precision. Arriving on time was not one of them. And so, just as casually as he told his friends he’d be departing this world, he casually told Death “I’ll get there when I get there.”
So, my Father refused to leave this Earth that moment I stood numbly in the library. He waited until the first of many nights in a long time that my Mom and I had slept at home - not ‘The Ranch’ - but Home, together. There was one time prior to this my Mom had brought all of my favourite stuffed animals, ‘Breyer’ horses, and my sweet “Lamb Chops” to Hospice. She had set up the guest bed and asked me if I wanted to stay. I remember going to the bathroom and staring at myself in the mirror, an ache in my heart - the first time I’d felt pain that I can recall. My heart ached not from sadness, but guilt. I didn’t want to stay. I didn’t want to have a sleepover with my dying Father and my grieving Mother. And in that moment I, again, felt that something was “wrong” with me for experiencing that desire to leave. I remember so desperately wanting to cry after telling my Mom, who had clearly put a lot of time and energy - both of which she had very little to spare - into setting up my “room”, that I didn’t want to curl up with my animals and have a Hospice slumber party. I missed her. I missed them both. But I wanted to be anywhere but there. I wanted to be at The Ranch, with the dogs, the cats, the cows and my beloved horses, where I was Alice, everything was my Wonderland, and nothing else seemed to exist beyond the bounds of the barbed-wire fences…
The night my Mom and I finally went home together is a night I can still remember as if it were yesterday. I remember the sights, the sounds, the smells, but most of all I remember the energy. We had a “camp-out” in the living room and roasted marshmallows and hot dogs in the brick fireplace. I remember how the carpet felt. I remember how the warmth of the fire felt against my face. I remember how my Mom’s arms felt around me as she wrapped me in her embrace. Though, what I remember most vividly occurred the next morning - March 23, 2001 - a day I will never forget. What I remember most vividly was the GASP that woke me in the morning. A gasp of air that forcefully filled my lungs and had me sitting upright in bed before I could even process my surroundings. It was one of those moments, perhaps you can relate, where I truly didn’t know where I was. I was so accustomed to waking up to the same sights, smells and feeling of my bed at The Ranch, that for a brief moment in time, I sat there deciphering the ceiling, the walls, and my duvet cover before the awareness that I was home settled in my body. I’ve experienced this on numerous other occasions after spending time at the cabin and on various other trips - the first night “back” from wherever I’ve been I awake in a near-panic before my mind processes that I’m just somewhere else.
It was dark. It was quiet. But I wasn’t alone. I knew in that moment that my Dad was no longer in his body on that bed in that Hospice. He was with me. I laid there for what felt like minutes, though I have no recollection of the time that elapsed between that moment and the moment the phone rang. I knew who was on that phone and I knew what they were about to say. The phone rang, my Mom answered, and what followed was a sound that, at the time, from my room down the hall, felt like part of my Mother’s soul leaving her body. A “NO” drawn out into a wail of despair and heartache that I felt emanate through every cell in my body. My Father, my Dad, her husband, the love of her life, a friend to many and an incredible soul, was gone.
Until this year, I’ve rarely spoken of these experiences in terms of the energy I felt. Energy was something I experienced in an abundance of forms. Energetic experiences made up for my inability at the time to be truly emotional. I felt my Father leave, just as strongly as I feel his presence in day-to-day moments now, but there have been very few energies I’ve felt that paralleled that which left my Mother’s Soul that morning. Like the gust of air that woke me from my slumber, multiplied by a million Hertz of heart-gripping, soul-shaking, energetic waves. There have been only a handful of other times I’ve experienced an energy anywhere near this magnitude. A moment and a feeling I will never forget. I felt the energy, and then again I felt nothing.
I remember my Uncle coming into my bedroom. Again, I have no idea how much time had passed between that phone call and his presence. I remember him kneeling before me on one knee, wrapping his arms around me, and I forced myself to fake sob. Of all moments, I felt like if I couldn’t cry then, there was truly something WRONG with me…
Between that day and the day we laid my Father’s body to rest in the Earth, there is much I can’t recall. Another moment that vividly stands out in my mind is the moment I sat on the steps at his funeral, my Mother beside me, and I mustered the courage to ask:
“Mom, why is everyone so sad? If Dad is no longer in pain and he’s in a better place, why is everyone crying?”
My question was a desperate attempt to understand, not everyone else’s emotions, but the lack of my own…
And then it happened. Standing in the front row with my hand in my Mom’s as the pastor said words in honour of my Father, I wept. Real tears. Real emotion. Not forced, not subdued by an innate instinct to “stay strong.” I cried so hard I was gasping for air. I remember my best friend appearing behind me to put her hands on my shoulders, and I wept.
I wept for the times I’d watched my Mom drag herself out of bed to walk me to school. Her chemo- and radiation-beaten body nearly unrecognizable to my little eyes.
I wept for the times I had played doctor on my Dad who was constantly complaining of his stomach aching - the times I looked back on and so desperately wished I had been a real doctor.
I wept for the memories that all flooded in during that moment…
I wept for the bike rides, the boat rides, the hours spent at the Zoo
Moments where it was just Mom and I, just Dad and I, where I’d wished the other was there too
I wept for winters at the ski hill, the summers at the lake,
All those time we had together, and the memories we could no longer make
I wept for the times we sang and danced as Dad played his guitar,
All those times we had together, that in that moment were being ripped from my heart
I wept for that C-word that I cursed in spite
How dare it take Dad, after us both watching Mom fight
That moment I wept like never before
I wept until I stood in a puddle of tears on the floor
No longer numb, I stood in that puddle of tears
Sad, angry, broken...saying “Goodbye Dad” after 9 short years
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I’ve sat here watching the little blinking vertical line on the page for some time now.
There’s so much I could continue to write. So much left unsaid.
As I ponder what’s most fitting and what words want to flow, I can’t help but think of this quote I recently shared with a dear friend who lost his own father recently in a strikingly similar way in which I lost my own.
This is more of an excerpt than a quote, but after the first time I read it I have never forgotten it. Its origin was actually from Reddit, and thus I can’t give proper credit to its author. These words filled my heart and spoke to my soul, I hope they may bring you some of the same peace they brought me:
[A response to someone on Reddit saying “My friend just died. I don’t know what to do”]:
“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, Mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbours, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents…
I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”...I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see them for what they are.
As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t give you any time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe some weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe and you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between the waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall, or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and you can prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side - soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from me - the waves never stop coming, and somehow, you don’t really want them to. You learn that you’ll survive them. Other waves will come, and you’ll survive them too.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves, and lots of shipwrecks.
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I’m going to leave you with that today, beautiful soul.
If you are reading this today, Father’s Day, I am sending extra love...
To those who have buried their Fathers
To those who never knew their Fathers
To those whose Fathers were physically present but emotionally absent
To those who desperately yearn to be Fathers
And to every beautiful soul that fits the spaces between.
You are seen.
You are heard.
You are felt.
You are held.
You are loved.
And you are never alone - not for one second of this life.
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Much Love, now more than ever,
From My Big Little Soul to Yours
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