Puzzling.
I don’t remember the exact day. It was July, and I was wondering if I could get a summer tan from the florescent lighting in my office when my mom called.
“Your dad…could be cancer.”
She said a lot, but it’s the only five words I remember. Spoiler alert: it was. And not long after, he “was.” The past tense still sounds like a tightening noose.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been a problem solver. Problems have solutions, and I love finding them. Naturally, puzzles have always been a favorite pastime of mine: dumping out all of the chaotic pieces, trying to put them back in order. I tackle puzzles like most problems in my life; I can’t stop until they’re solved. Hours can pass, my back and neck can ache, but I will finish. Every time. I do not puzzle passively.
During the sixth months from his diagnosis to death, I felt like my entire life was torn into pieces and dumped onto a coffee table. I looked down at a new puzzle, one I didn’t open or ask for. My fingers itched to move the pieces, to feel that sigh of relief when they start to click together. I waited.
First, I read a lot of instruction manuals on this grief puzzle. Five stages. Not linear. Comes in waves. Doesn’t get easier, but you’ll get stronger. Get support. Find a purpose. Stay active. So many suggestions, but all I read was you will have no control. There will be no executable plan. You can’t finish this puzzle.
But I ignored everything and reached for the pieces in the box labeled “my old life” instead. I tried to click together the pieces of the pre-cancer box, with a picture of me and my dad on the front, for ages 24 and under. I went back to the office. I kept the same routine, the same apartment, the same pieces.
But it wasn’t the same. None of them fit together anymore. Seemingly similar parts wouldn’t mesh like they used to. The design looked nothing like the one on the box. The edges were missing; the frame was gone. The florescent lighting stung. The routine felt like a bad dream.
Whether I wanted to or not, I needed to wake up and get a new box of pieces. So I did. I bought a puppy. I got married. We quit our jobs. We’re moving across the country to Colorado. My mind races each time I toss an old piece and add a new one. New climate. New life. New puzzle to solve.
By July, when we reach the one-year mark of the date I can’t remember and the phone call I’ll never forget, none of the pieces I hold will look like ones that were dumped on that coffee table. And they might not fit together either, but I’m learning to be okay with that.
Most people suggest not making any major life changes while grieving. But, like my dad, I’m not most people. I’m not naive enough to think that this will solve my problems, but, if my life can’t look exactly like it did when he was here, then I want it to look completely different in his absence. I don’t want a hole in the wall. I want to knock the entire thing down. I will never be the same. Why should my life be?
The last puzzle I worked with my dad was actually in Colorado, two months before he passed. It had an extremely intricate candy pattern on it, and for once, I was having trouble finishing it in one day. As the days of our trip ticked by and the pieces remained unchanged, my family laughed at my expense, knowing how much it would bother me to leave it incomplete.
The night before our flight, my dad looked at my frustrated body hunched over the puzzle. “You don’t have to finish it to have enjoyed it,” he said. “Put it down and get a new one. You’ve got to move on. ”
So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
