I Feel the Sting of Loss on the Anniversary of My Father’s Death Like It Was Yesterday
But last year, for the first time ever, I mourned alone
It’s been 24 years since I woke up to the screeching sound of the buzzer in my apartment, my ten-month-old son nestled between my husband and me. My mother-in-law delivered the news that my father had been in a terrible car accident. We rushed to the emergency room where, after a grueling night, the doctor announced that my 54-year-old father had died. We walked out of Huntington Hospital as the sun rose to a world that no longer included him in it.
Two decades later, I lived in a house a little further east on Long Island. After returning home from driving my youngest child to college for her freshman year, I wrapped my arms around my 13-year-old dog where she lay on her red and white striped dog bed, and told her how much I loved her. She had been diagnosed with lymphoma during the quarantine, and I crouched on the kitchen floor while the vet injected her with the shot that would end her pain. I sobbed as my grown son helped the doctor lift the stretcher with my dog’s motionless body on it, taking her out of our front door and away from us forever.
Both of these losses — my father long ago when I was a young mother building a family and my dog decades later when I became an empty nester — happened in the month of August, bookending the long, hot days of my least favorite month.
But they also trigger sadness during the short, cold days of winter. For the past two decades, as twinkly holiday lights lined the streets of New York City and its suburbs, my brain took in the festive vibe while my heart ached for my father. Last winter, I watched neighborhood dogs play in the December snow and laughed in amusement, though a dull ache of loss pulsated within me.
The passing of time can soften the debilitating grief, but sadness and trauma are baked into the rhythm of my days like the words to a favorite song. When I hear Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” on the radio, I don’t have to think about singing the lyrics. In the same way, I feel the sting of loss on the anniversary of my father’s death like it was yesterday. I hear the apartment buzzer. I sense the musty claustrophobia of Gutterman’s Funeral Home. I smell the freshly cut grass from my mother’s backyard during Shiva.
The fabric of the physical world burrows itself into our bones and resurfaces each year at the time of the initial loss. Similarly, the sights and aromas of holidays trigger a built-in grief alarm: “It’s time to celebrate with your loved ones,” it says, “but some of them will never again be here for this party.”
For years, my dog helped me cope with these seasonal sparks of grief. During summers, I had her to keep me company as I sat outside reading. On quiet winter nights, when menorah candles reflected their light in black panes of glass, I snuggled up with her on the couch, easing my pain with her cold nose against my cheek.
Last December, a few months after my dog died, I walked aimlessly through my house, missing my father in a way that couldn’t be assuaged by petting my dog. When the days grew longer this past summer, I realized it was the first August since my children were young that I was completely alone with my books. As a high school librarian, I typically revel in the seemingly endless summer days when I can read for hours undisturbed.
But this year has been different. As the ache of missing my father intensified in August, I mourned alone, both for the man I revered and for the dog who had helped me get through summer after summer of grief. Now as the cycle returns to winter and I face another holiday season, I am getting more used to this double dose of emptiness.
When a row of books gets too heavy in my library, the bookend loses its hold. Sometimes the books shift slightly to one side when I place one more on the shelf; other times the weight is too much and several books come crashing down on top of one another, the metal bookend falling to the ground.
The boundaries of my grief are similar: it’s impossible to know which emotions will surface and in which ways they will push the limits of my mind. No matter how my grief manifests itself during the difficult times of the year, I have learned I am resilient.
I often feel like the hole inside me can’t be filled, but with a little shifting and reorganizing, I can face the memories of these two devastating events that threaten to consume me. I may feel like they are wreaking havoc on my brain, but with care and reflection, I can shift these bookends back into their place and think of my loved ones with gratitude in my heart and priceless memories in my mind.
Karin Greenberg is a high school librarian in Manhasset, New York. She graduated from George Washington University with a degree in English Literature and has a dual master’s in English and Education from Hunter College and a master’s in library science from Queens College. A former English teacher, she is an obsessive reader and writes for School Library Journal and Knowledge Quest. She loves animals, hiking, and spending time with her husband and three children.
This essay is part of our Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve column.
