Grief can’t sing “Happy Birthday.”

Losing my father, Losing my mind

Grief.

Grief is something I’ve thought about daily over these past 11 months since my Dad died. Before that, I only really thought about how to spell it (they say the smartest people can’t spell, and I’m terrible at it).

I think about grief all the time. Not necessarily the sadness over my dad’s cancer and passing, but the effect it has on me on a daily basis.

I think about it when my husband does 18 things that I asked, but forgets one so I flip out(he really is fabulous). When I want to throw a stapler coworker for asking when I’m going to have a baby, or for asking me a million questions before 7 am. When I am supposed to meet a friend and can’t bear to get out of my pajamas. I’m pretty convinced it’s the reason my body is revolting against itself, and I keep getting sick. Most importantly, it’s the reason why I feel like I’m losing my mind on an hourly basis.


None of these things have anything to do with my Dad, but after they happen, I can almost hear a Hollywood voiceover saying, “once again, grief kept her on the edge.”

I’ve come to terms with the fact that things will never be the same, but it’s taking me longer to realize I’ll never be the same.

Though, I can’t say all the changes have been bad. The clichéd reasons you would think it has made me better, well, they have. “Life’s too short for stupid drama,” “take a chance, you may not have tomorrow,” “I watched my Dad die from cancer and picked up the pieces and am surviving, so I can face anything.” Yup, clichés exist for a reason, all those things are true.

Plus, I have a really awesome lighthouse tattoo in memorial of my Dad, which took 3.5 hours to finish. Ouch.





So naturally, on his birthday, I’m once again fighting a momentous battle with grief. My first instinct was to burrow up and spend my long weekend in solitude with Gilmore Girls on Netflix, but cliché alert, I knew I couldn’t do that for my Mom.

Plus, that is not how Loreliei and Rory Gilmore would handle the situation.

My Dad was a man of few words (unless he was telling a story or laying down some useless trivia). He wasn’t a stereotypical 80s teen comedy Dad who was filled with advice and helpful anecdotes at just the right time. Most of the time his entire input would be, “Tacky,” or “That’s what happens when you vote for Democrats” (it goes without saying that our politics clashed).

However, he did love a good one-liner. And when it came to Birthdays, he had a few, “Celebrate another year around the sun,” and his all time favorite, “Growing older, but not growing up.” The latter being a Jimmy Buffet quote of course.

I always wanted to get that inscribed on his yearly Stock’s birthday cake, but I’ll put that on the list of things I never got to do with him.

I’m having an internal struggle, part of me wants to give into the grief and spend all day crying, in addition to deactivating my Facebook account when it reminds me, “John Student has a birthday today.” Thanks Zuckerberg, I needed another reminder.

But, the other part keeps remembering my Dad’s birthday one-liners and wants to smile.

This was a man who was quoting Bob Marley, “everything is gonna be alright,” after he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

So, it seems wrong to cry. And instead celebrate him, celebrate what would have been his 65th birthday, and hope to god all those Medicare enrollment telemarketers will now stop calling once a day.

So dinner, a musical, and a surprise for my Mom is on hand for tonight. Celebrating that we all survived another year around the sun without him.

I’m now realizing that I clearly didn’t learn anything from my Father’s day post, since the messages are practically mirror images, but oh well.

I hope to write more from now on. I’ve slowly been realizing that grief has been keeping me away from writing as well. So, let’s hope I can win that battle too.

Part 2 in what hopefully* will be a multi-part series on “Losing my father, Losing my mind”