Aging & Grief

I Miss His Voice The Most

Losing an admired, public parent who privately battled with mental health

One month ago I lost my Dad. The world doesn’t feel right and the grief pangs are still dripping raw. Though I’m almost fifty, I’ll always be his little girl. Ours was a deep connection. Cut from the same clichéd “tortured artist” cloth, Dad and I shared similar talents and fought comparable beasts of mental health. But Dad’s social anxiety — far more potent than my own — was largely unrecognized by anyone outside the family. Dad was beloved, admired by many. Yet, despite living a mostly public life in broadcast media, the mental health battles encapsulated and rendered him almost painfully private. But I knew him. And now, in the throbbing quiet of this void, I wish the whole world could’ve known him too.

Dad (left) in studio during an interview he conducted with his dear cousin Bernard (a.k.a., Hollywood character actor, Gregory Walcott, 1928–2015), sometime in the 1960s — photo courtesy author

In hindsight, I’ve been grieving him most of my adult life. I only recently learned there’s an actual term for this: anticipatory grief. Though the illness that eventually took him was swift, his overall decline was slow, steady, and very, very long. I guess I could say it was lifelong. Of course, some of my greatest laughs and happiest memories are from times spent with Dad, but when you’re a kindred spirit — and you’re both empaths living in what seems a perpetual state of childhood trauma response —…