My last year in words..

My wedding anniversary is coming up in 10 days. While I am happy to have married the most wonderful man, I’m also reflecting on everything that has happened in my life, in this last year alone.

I got married on the 27th of May 2018. I had an endoscopic myomectomy on June 9th, 2018. I lost my father on December 12th, 2018. And I gained two dress sizes from January to May of 2019. How does one process this all? How do I look back at the year that was, and recollect fond memories? There have been many, don’t get me wrong. But the loss, and the pain, overshadows the joy on many levels.

My father was a very happy man. He lived and died being happy. My last video call with him was on 2nd December, when he was having a drink with my brother’s in-laws. When I was ready to hang up, he raised his glass to the camera and said “Cheers!”. That is my last visual of my father. That is the last time I “saw” my father. I use quotations because the body I saw on the 15th of December which was brought to our home looked like him, but my father was not in it. He would never be this cold, unhappy and lifeless, so I will never associate that as being the last time I saw him. My father’s funeral was very well attended. The love that poured out to our family was unbelievable, but it made a lot of sense, because my father was a very loved person. He was not very talkative, and always had a stern look on his face. But people who interacted with him, knew him to be a funny (dad-jokes exclusively), kindhearted person who would go out of his way to help others.

Grief was very intense in the first few weeks. Even when I was back in Canada, I couldn’t believe I had cremated my father, prayed for his soul and had his ashes strewn in a holy river. All of it seemed unreal to me, at the same time being the biggest reality that ever hit me. Milestones were the worst. January 12th, when it was one month since he died, I stayed awake crying because I couldn’t come to terms with looking at his picture that I wanted to post as my Instagram story saying something like “I will love you forever..” I could not bring myself to do it, because then it would become real. I hate that I used social media to escape from it all. My hours on other people’s stories, watching YouTube videos was and is my defense mechanism from actually making my mind face this truth.

I still find myself thinking about him often. I hate the face I make when someone around me talks about their father, or when a movie or show comes on TV where father-daughter relationships are displayed. Innately I know it is wrong, but my internal dialogue every time is “How dare they? Don’t they know I lost my dad?” But, I have also become empathetic of people in my life. A colleague received a phone call when we were at lunch telling him that his father was in the hospital. After hanging up, he looked straight across the table at me and said, “Why can’t they be close to us so we can go running?” I understood exactly what that meant. In that moment, we were both connected like only humans know how to connect. Another colleague of mine told me that his parents were visiting him from India for a few weeks. And I could completely feel his joy and pride, I felt it too.

“Death is like removing a tight shoe”. I read these lines repeatedly, when I was sitting at the airport on December 12th, waiting for my flight to take me to my mourning family, so I could mourn with them. I needed to know what happens after death, what does it mean for my father, how does he feel at this time. This line helped me look past the pain I was feeling. It made me think of my father in his joyful state. I visualized him with our family dog, Brownie, who passed away 9 years ago, because I had heard that pets wait at the threshold of the gates to heaven, and greet their owners when they die. I saw him, holding Brownie, and eating his favorite ice cream. This thought still makes me smile when I think of my father.

I have to hold on to this image for the rest of my life. I have to believe that there was meaning to this experience. My life changed twice in the span of 6 months. I am learning to live with these changes. Learning to love more, give more, laugh more, be with my family more, call my mom more, and lead my life with more love.