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I Want My Daughter’s Grief To Be Epic When I Die

4 min readApr 11, 2024

If all goes the way I hope, I’ll die before her and I wish for her to have the expansive space to grieve when I do

Photo by Ema Studios on Unsplash

I know that’s one hell of a title. It’s honestly far more misleading than I intend, as it’s not so much that I desire for my daughter to experience grief. As the lyrics of the song, If I Could go,

If I could I’d protect you
From the sadness in your eyes

However, I understand that grief is a fundamental part of life, one in which there is no way to prevent ourselves from experiencing, I want her to have the expansive space to grieve — most especially once I die.

Like most parents, I don’t wish for my daughter to die before me. I know that we mere mortals were never promised that we would all get to become centenarians. Yet, that doesn’t stop most of us from wishing and hoping that we and our loved ones will experience life well into old age. I am no exception. I want my daughter to have a long, happy life and I want her life to extend far longer than my own. That might be selfish of me, but I’m ok with that.

While I wouldn’t quite call it my deepest fear, in the same vein as people have fears such as atychiphobia, which is an extreme fear of failure, or public speaking; I do occasionally think about this. I fear that my daughter will be left alone…

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Bernie’s Daughter
Bernie’s Daughter

Written by Bernie’s Daughter

Writer, mother, and daughter of a famous dead guy. Still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, but I hear growing up is overrated.

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