Not the Daddy Bowl…
Raw excerpts from my work in progress, Oh Shit. I’m Lost!
Talking about the life of the dearly departed is messy. It is easy to want to cloak people in sainthood after they die. It is easy to look upon the person left behind with judgment. I know I’ve done it. But the reality is that life is not linear. Nor are the stages of grief. The way we look at our life after someone is gone is a complicated lens that can evoke some unexpected emotions.
There are no perfect people. That is part of the magic of being human.
The Daddy Bowl
Nearly 20 years ago, a dear friend gave me a fruit bowl that belonged to her father. It was a beautiful piece of Japanese Soga glass with gold leaves and shimmering flowers and berries.
My friend’s father was a social butterfly — always wheels up on an adventure. He had a kind heart and kind eyes that crinkled at the corners with every smile. He reminds me a lot of Tim.
When he died suddenly, I asked her if I could have something to remind me of him. She gave me the fruit bowl and a set of wine glasses.
“The Daddy Bowl,” as it became known, was one of my most cherished possessions. That bowl made the trek through six homes in three states as time pushed me from the wild days of our twenties to big kid jobs and responsibilities.
One night I was in the bedroom changing into grubby sweats after a night out on the town. I heard the loud crack of heavy glass coming from the kitchen, followed by the words, “Oh my God, I’m just gonna go kill myself now.” When I rounded the corner, Tim was a shade of white that I’d never seen on a human. He was holding a bottle of red wine and standing motionless with his hand covering his mouth like a little kid.
The Daddy Bowl was shattered, having met a violent death after colliding with a wine bottle. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I collected the pieces, nestled them together, and pushed them into a corner on the counter.
This was not the first pottery massacre. The first was a blue vase I had bought for my first house while thrifting with my Grams. It has no monetary value. I just loved it because it reminded me of my Grams. I found it in much the same condition as the Daddy Bowl — looking like it met its demise in a collision with a ball. Because it had. Tim, of course, offered to superglue it back together or buy me another one.
I finally did with the Daddy Bowl as I had done with the blue vase. I swept the pieces into the bin and let them go. It was just a thing, after all. Its absence in my life didn’t take the memories with it — in fact, I added a new one that *eventually* made me chuckle. There was really no point in being angry.
Life was like that with Tim. A beautiful disaster punctuated with sobering reminders of impermanence.
Broken things — specifically broken hearts are what initially drew my pen to paper to tell our story. I wondered, if you could see into the future and know that someone would break your heart, would you make the same choice? But this work has evolved much more beyond that early question.
This is a story about walking beside a man that was handed the pink slip on his life. I was ill-equipped for the job, just as he was ill-equipped to see his timeline end less than two years after his unexpected cancer diagnosis.
I couldn’t fix Tim any more than he could fix the Daddy Bowl. However, Tim’s life has now become more than the ending of his story. In some weird way, his ending is the real beginning of my life and next chapter. Though it took me a little while to find my way back.
Finally, after two years of the noise in my brain arresting my ability to write, I feel like I am bursting at the seams to share the stories in my heart. I want to yell from the mountain tops that my career is a gift. That all the wrong turns I took to get here and the way I toiled in desperation and fear, in angst, and frenzied excitement was worth every second. I want to tell you what it means to look back on a relationship and see its naked truth and how caring for someone with a terminal illness changes you fundamentally.
If you are going through the same thing, I wish I could fashion the words in some elegant way to tell you it will be OK. That the emotions you experience as a caregiver are natural, even if they are not very pretty. Feeling sorry for your partner, for yourself, feeling rage, and being annoyed by people are part of it. I encourage you to express those things in whatever medium feels right; they are temporary and allow you to get back up the next day with renewed energy and kindness.
I would also tell you that when you are ready to move forward with your life that people will judge. Not everyone. Those that do were going to judge whether it was six weeks, six months, or six years before you moved forward. You don’t have to be stuck. Accepting the love of someone new doesn’t diminish the dearly departed.
Most of all, what I want to share is that this is a gift, although you cannot see it now. It’s a gift you never wanted but one that will reveal how short and precious this one life truly is.
Do the damn thing, babes.
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About Me
I am a brand marketing consultant and accountability coach hellbent on inspiring ambitious people to take action, aim higher and achieve runaway success. I specialize in public sector brand voice, and helping small teams win more business and build magnetic cultures.
I help with three things:
- Mindset. Mindset and accountability coaching to identify and destroy hidden obstacles.
- Message. Clear up confusion from the inside out to win more business.
- Market. When you’re serious about quality at every touchpoint in the customer journey.
