This week marked the moment in my life where I have now lived longer fatherless than I lived with a father. Losing my father in my early twenties profoundly impacted my life. So much of that day is seared into my mind. In a matter of hours I went from looking at apartments with my fiancé to sobbing uncontrollably on my parents’ bathroom floor. This experience of grief changed me, but not all of the changes were negative. In the midst of the pain, there came one beautiful gift.
Resilience is defined as the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity or the like; buoyancy.*
Buoyancy.
At 22, I had been a college graduate for less than a year and was in the midst of my first year of graduate school. I was still a full-time student who had never held a full-time job. During the school year, I lived with my brother in our childhood home, and over breaks, I lived with my parents in their new home. When my parents had moved to the shore three years earlier for my mother’s job, I was the only child who moved with them. Still a teenager at the time, I hadn’t felt ready to take on the degree of independence that my older siblings had opted to embrace. I didn’t feel grown-up yet, despite being engaged. Two weeks before my dad died, I had been home on spring break, chatting with Dad over dinner and then riding our bikes down to the bay to watch the sunset.
The loss of my dad was the first real tragedy of my life. I had smaller losses and hurts, but nothing life defining. The grief hit me with an immense force; suffocating me. At the time, I thought life itself was over. It felt broken beyond repair. I experienced a sense of hopelessness like I had never even imagined possible. I firmly believed that I would never recover. Never. Having never experienced that kind of pain, I could not fathom any earthly healing could ever equal the loss. A few days later, I recall collapsing to the floor and just sobbing. I know they say that the body cannot remember pain the way it remembers images or smells, but I disagree. I still remember the feeling of that pain even now, though with less intensity.
But then it happened. Slowly. Gradually, I began to be able to function again, to think of something other than the loss. First a moment, then an hour, then a day. I began to find joy and laughter. I was able to dream and hope and feel whole again even though I was was irrevocable changed. It took time, months, years even. Each day brought me closer to healing.
Looking back, what I learned was that I could survive and heal from even the worst tragedies. I could come out on the other side. Later on, when other losses, hurts, and struggles came into my life, I saw them with new eyes. I saw them for what they were, something that could be overcome. Most of the painful events of my life that followed that day paled in comparison but not all of them. Not the year of caring for Mom before she passed away, not the loss of our son, Sean, and not every moment of marriage and parenting that happened since that fateful day in 1996.
My dad taught me so very much in my life that I will forever be grateful for, but his parting gift to me was probably the one that ultimately helped me the most. I will never be thankful that I lost my dad so young. The longing for my dad has never gone away. I imagine the depth of love I had for him was in part why the loss was so devastating. I suppose it makes sense that the first great love of a girl’s life is her father, so it seems almost natural for it to also be the first great loss she experiences. For me, that loss gave way to strength, courage, and hope. And that is the true inheritance my father left me.
*The irony of this word is not lost on me considering the fact that it was my father drowning that would eventually give me the gift of resiliency.