I feel like I’ve spent a lot of the last year just trying to
dodge well meaning people who want to have conversations that I don’t feel like
having. I’m sure this is more my paranoia than actual reality, but I’ve found
well-meaning words with little understanding of me or my situation do more harm
than good. In fact I think I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid people’s
input, after discovering at an early enough age that most people just don’t “get”
me. Dad always did, tho, and Mum is the first to admit that he could figure out
what was going on when she couldn’t. My way of grieving isn’t to sit around just
feeling sad or regretting my loss. Feelings are feelings, and facts are facts, and
so it’s not like those times aren’t present but I’d rather focus on the good memories
and the ‘hope of the world to come’ than lamenting all that might have been.
I spent most of the 14th-16th bracing
for a potential “onslaught” of messages. At first I thought this was sort of
vain, but then when absently scrolling through Facebook to distract myself and
noticing that someone, not in my immediate family, was using dad’s face as
their profile pic I realized that I wasn’t completely off base. Nothing like
trying to kill a few moments of boredom and having your dead father’s face
stalk you around social media because no matter how many times you try to block
or hide the posts they’re everywhere – newsfeed! FB messenger! stories! It was
rather ghastly, until it became so incredibly pervasive that I had to see the
humour at the level of awfulness this was. Well, thank God I’ve always been
able to find something funny in most situations.
My actual plan for the “memorial” worked. As I remarked to
David, people like us, who take big risks and have to push regularly beyond our
comfort zones don’t get the “luxury” of taking to our beds when things get
hard. I’m not negating self-care, and I certainly have had plenty of that
thanks to my loving family, but I’m not in a position where I can really just
take a few days off work so I can sit in bed and be depressed. I wasn’t happy,
but at least going to the office and focusing on the mountain of work I want to
complete before my impending maternity leave was something to do, rather than
giving my brain any more excuse to rewire itself to find certain days/times of
year depressing.
So, one year survived. Natural drive for analysis makes me
want to “score” it, but that seems ridiculous. It was a year of survival mode,
for more reasons than just mere grief, but it also had its glorious times. Most
of January – April was a blur but then once life for the next year sort of had
a settled pattern I could crawl out of the fog and, in early May, we took off on
our vacation to Hangzhou. Climbing through the hills there and praying for dad’s
soul at a mountain temple were what I needed to complete that first stage, to
connect once more with the world around me. After that it was a matter of
slowly cutting back on the bad coping tactics. I’m sure it has not been an easy
year for my family, but fortunately they haven’t made me feel it. And there is something
wonderful to be said for a husband and children who quietly pick up your pieces
and just get on with it, never making you feel badly for what you can’t do, and
always supporting you for what you can.
On the way home last week a local woman struck up a
conversation with Walter, and as he expressed his adoration for his father I
realized that the torch has been carried. I love that my children have a dad
they can adore just as much as I adored my dad—
Woman: Why are you in Shanghai?
W: Because my daddy has a way good job. My daddy is way
smart and he works hard so he has a good job and soon he’s going to have an
even better one because he is so smart!
