If You’re Grieving, There’s Comfort In The Writing Community
As obvious as it should’ve been, I didn’t make this connection.
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I lost my Dad on September 20th. The grief was (and is) heavy. About a month later I wrote this essay, trying to articulate the small comfort that was carrying me at the time: “his soothing, golden radio voice, captured in real time — suspended — and forever preserved in various vintage recordings.” Of course, it wasn’t just the sound of his beautiful voice. It was everything his voice represented to me, some of which I hoped to capture in that essay.
It’s now a few weeks after writing that piece. Hasn’t even been two full months since he passed but it feels like so much longer. Like a void filled of eternities. Why is that?
Other days, time flies ridiculously fast. Like, it’s already bedtime but didn’t I just wake up? And I’ve been able to work and carry on completely as normal, even returning again to that deep well of my favorite medicine: laughter. Like nothing changed. Like nothing happened. Why is that?
And still, other times, I feel sore at the mere sight of strangers in public having the audacity to go about their daily lives — happily — in their own bubbles, as if the most important man hadn’t just died.
Grief is so peculiar.
We’re told there’s no right or wrong way to handle it, and I’ve definitely done some acute grieving over my (nearly) five decades on this earth. From cherished pets to beloved grandparents, aunts, uncles, and distant cousins.
I’ve mourned co-workers, pastors, neighbors, casual friends, parents of good friends… several of them lost, painfully, to suicide.
I recall grieving a few young people who died tragically in both elementary and high school. Wrecks, mostly. But some at the hands of long, cruel terminal illnesses like cystic fibrosis or cancer.
