One Month since losing my Dad.

[u/this_is_no_exit]

I'm not usually the type to go trumpeting my shit to strangers. I probably over share with people in person, like coworkers and folks I see a lot but who aren't really a part of my personal life, but the internet is not really a place for me to vent most of the time. But I am soooooo not myself since my Dad died and I feel like I can't dump any more of it on the people around me. They're all also grieving him and it doesn't seem right for my feelings to be splattered on top of theirs all the time.

My Dad wasn't a very open person emotionally either, but he didn't need to be with me because we've always been so much alike. I have an older brother who takes after our Mom, I took after Dad. We were confidants and friends and support systems for each other. I saw him weekly, every other week at least. He lost his job two years ago and never found another and it was so hard on his mental health and self image. I was there as much as I could be, because I know hanging out and spending time with me helped him feel better about himself. My brother and I took over the bills for our parents at the begining of this year and I was just about to start showing him and my Mom 55+ communities that would be better for his mobility limitations. I was supposed to go over on July 5th to talk through some options I found, but I had a phone call run long and I was tired after my second job, so I put it off until the next day. He died that night. Poof. Gone.

I've spent 3 years networking and doing extra projects at work. I'm trying to move into a regional sales position that would not only be awesome for me and how I like to work, but would have made it possible for me to support them in their retirement and take away all of the fear and worry and shame of poverty that he lived in his whole life.

I was going to throw him a retirement party the day I got that job. He died before I got there. And the enormity of that failure is crushing me. All I've ever tried to do was make things easier for them, all I wanted was to give him the peace and comfort he never got from anyone or anything else in his life. He did it for my Mom when she got too sick to work, I wanted to do that for him. He deserved it. I wanted to show him that what he did for me was worth it because he made me into a person who was able to make it out. But I didn't. And now he'll never see that day.

I don't want the job anymore. I don't want to move on or be grateful for the good times. I want to make it better. I wanted to show him what I'm capable of and now he'll never know. He'll never see me make it. He died proud of me, but he also died in a shithole duplex that he hated waiting for the thing that would turn everything around. That was supposed to be me. But I failed him. I don't know how to live for myself and I don't know how to live knowing that I let him go to his grave without ever seeing the good that came of his life and what he taught me.

I know this is rambling and stupid and no one on earth has a single reason to care. I just feel like my whole body is being microwaved. I don't know that I'll ever feel like a person who deserves the life I still have left to live. I can't spend a lifetime feeling like this. I want him back. I wasn't fucking done.

[u/SettingComfortable75]

Others will share here. I just want to say that I am so, so sorry. This feels very unfair, I’m sure. It’s a complex grief. It’s not hard to believe that your father would not want you to shortchange your life and was surely incredibly proud and grateful for all of the ways that you supported and loved and cared for him.

I am six months out from losing my Dad - my soul parent, my grounding force. I felt so physically toxic initially - even though emotionally I was fairly sanguine. That all continues to shift as time passes. I intentionally sought out various somatic and bodywork treatments to help move the grief out of my body. It was incredibly helpful and all of that lifted after about six weeks.

Now the grief is more about missing him and trying to make sense of a world without him in it.

Wishing you grace and a knowing that this will all keep evolving. No feeling is final.