The Silent Therapy of Journaling
How journaling helped me process grief
My dad died during my final year of law school. He never woke up from his third heart bypass surgery. I stood next to his bed in ICU when they switched off the life support. I remember how his eyelids had opened at the last moment right after the machines went silent. His irises were all milky and faded. They were not my father’s eyes.
His passing had a profound impact on me. It felt like the ceiling to my world had been ripped away, that suddenly the rules of life applied to me. I didn’t have immunity, after all.
We had a rocky relationship up, and until I entered law school. You see, I screwed up a lot, and my dad had concerns about my future, like whether I would have one. By going to law school, I had him beaming with unrestrained pride. I was getting my life together. That was one of his biggest concerns.
I had received an offer of employment with a law firm in a town near ours that year. I didn’t accept the firm’s first offer, and so they had amended it and asked me to reconsider. My excitement was subdued by my dad being in the hospital, but I felt confident he would walk out as he did before, his veins updated and new, a renewed zest in his step. I was eager to tell him the news about the offer. After all, this was how we both wanted my…
