Today is Father’s Day here in Melbourne Australia and marks the 13th Father’s Day without my dad.
Today, I have cried a lot…. more than a lot actually. I felt like a blubbering mess for most of the day. I am always emotional on Father’s Day and any day really when I think about him, especially days that signify the brilliant man he was.
Days like today hit different. When I see people celebrating their fathers and I wish I could do the same. I think sometimes “I hope they know how lucky they are, to hear their dad laugh and hug him today”. I smile when I see it, express gratitude that people get to have that moment with their dads, and for the times I had the same.
I went to his resting place today as I do, especially on Father’s Day. I cried and talked to him about everything that’s been going on lately. It’s always hard being there. It’s surreal really, but peaceful and comforting at the same time. Sometimes when I am having a rough day, I want to rush there and talk to him, like I used to rush home to my dad after a hard day at school.
People say grief gets easier, I don’t think that’s true. I think we just learn to let grief wash over us a bit better as time goes on, but the it never really goes, not for me anyway, not yet.
My dad passed away on the 14th of December 2008 after a battle with an addiction to alcohol. My dad was not the addiction. Sure, sometimes life was hard, harder than anyone but us will ever know, but my dad, who he truly was, was the most amazing man and father. He truly loved us. Loved my mum, twin sister and I so much it often drove him to tears.
My dad was a brilliant man. He captivated every room he entered, listened to peoples stories with intent and made even person he spoke to feel special. He shared his gift of music with the world, and to this day, he is still my favourite recording artist of all time. He loved us unconditionally. Loved his children, his wife, his parents, his siblings, endless amount of nieces and nephews and all of his friends. My dad truly cared about people, but what mattered to him most, was his family. He loved us and we knew that without question.
Today I want to acknowledge my father, the man who gifted me with such creativity, a heart of a lion and a belief that anything is possible. I want to thank my dad for teaching me some pivotal life lessons when he was alive, and for teaching me even more once he passed.
My dads passing was the single handedly the most painful experience of my life. Losing my dad suddenly was something nightmares are made of. Losing my dad has impacted the way I live my life in more ways that I can count. Grief crippled me for many years, well into my mid twenties. For me, healing meant facing my own real horror story head on, many years after he had passed.
My dads passing was one of my first lessons of overcoming, and truly the most significant. Overcoming the shock, loss and grief of the king of my heart took some pretty hard lessons. I went down some hard roads of denial that he was gone, guilt that I couldn’t save him, and heartbreak for my mum who lost her husband and the love of her life and my siblings who lost their father too. I didn’t know how to handle it, nobody did.
The loss of my dad was how I learned first hand that people deal with pain differently. Some cry, some scream, some get angry. Some hide their pain and some bury it into a drink, a drug, or behaviour that does more damage than good. I saw first hand from people around me what my options were when it came to trying to drag myself through this experience of heartbreak and loss.
Denial was my first choice, not looking at his pictures, never going into him and my mums bedroom, telling no one where I had been when I returned to uni, when they asked why I had been away from class for so long, denial was what I chose. The denial felt so much easier than saying “my dad had passed away”. That space of denial lasted a while and did more damage to me than I could see, but my mother, she could see it all.
My mum encouraged me to access grief counselling and it was the most painful, healing and excruciating thing I had to do. To sit in front of a stranger and say “my dad had died” made me weak at the knees. It still makes me tremble just thinking about it.
To this day I am so grateful for my mum, for supporting her 3 children to try and navigate the most painful thing they had ever experienced while navigating the same for herself. I will never understand from where her strength came. She is the queen of my heart.
As sad as I am and as heart breaking as it it to lose my dad, I always thought I was one of the lucky ones and so were my siblings. We had our father in our lives for a lot longer than other people do. We had a man in our lives who loved us and tried so hard to beat his demons right up until his last days, just so he could stay here for us and my mum. I love him and my mum for giving me my siblings of which I see my dad in every day. We are the lucky ones who can say we have witnessed and experienced such a love.
Dad to me, you and I are one in the same, I have your personality, your gift of creativity, the bravery to live freely, in the way I choose without regret, and my biggest complement to this day is when people say that I am like you. You make me feel brave when I feel like I can’t go on, your life inspires me every time my fears creep in. Your right there when I take leaps of faith and every time I put a pen to paper. I see you in me as a child and more so as I get older. I love you for that, for all that you are and all that I am. Thank you for my siblings, I see you in them and it brings me joy.
Perspective is everything – another life lesson I have learned. I could of been angry that I lost my father at 21 years old and loth the moments he won’t see, OR, I could be grateful for the man I had in my life for 21 years that I love more than words can say. I choose gratitude always. I chose it at 21, I choose it today and I’ll choose it again tomorrow.
To all the children that don’t have a father in their life, you are loveable, you are loved and you are worthy of all the love you want and desire. For the people who have a father who has chosen not to be in their life, it’s not your fault, you are loveable and perfect as you are. For the people who lost their father like I did, it’s ok to cry when you see kids play with their dad, it’s ok to cry when you think of the things they won’t get to see and it’s ok to cry when you miss them, but know they are here with us every day in spirit and in us.
To people who still have their dads in their lives, tell them you love them, hug them tight and appreciate them, because that is exactly what people like me wish we could do.
Happy fathers day to the fathers who have gone before us.
Happy Father’s Day to my dad and the King of my heart. I love you.
xxxB
