Grief, Death & Aloneness

My dad died last week. I think since then my life’s been a huge blur; I spent so long worrying about him and trying to think of how I could help him that now I feel so lost.

I’ve lost a lot of people in my life but not really experienced many deaths, especially not in the last six years.

Losing your Dad is, in all honesty, really fucking weird. My whole body is in a state of shock, I wake up every morning and remember he’s gone and pain infiltrates my heart like it’s the first time all over again.

I can’t quite grasp how one day somebody is here and breathing and the next they’re gone.

Part of me feels like I’ve failed because I couldn’t help, part of me feels like I’ve lost part of me, because I lost someone so special. There is nobody on this planet who loved me more, because he loved me to his core until the very end.

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I feel like a child lost in the supermarket, hysterical because I want my Dad, except nobody’s going to call him to the checkouts to come and collect me.

He won’t walk me down the aisle, he’ll never make me pancakes again, we’ll never walk in the woods and pretty fields again, never cook and pretend we’re on a TV show called ‘Dad & Daughter cooking’. I reread through our text messages and I text him still but he doesn’t reply.

Grief is all-consuming and impossible to navigate.

I know I have to make an amazing life now, for the both of us, but sometimes I can’t leave my bed.

I go to the beach, I learn how to play songs on the keyboard, I paint, I go to work. How does life continue so normally when my whole world is upside down?

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My dad was 53. His birthday was April 25th. He used to be an incredible bartender. He was funny. He watched Top Gear and listened to the BBC Sports radio station in the car. He loved driving until he didn’t. He made us pancakes every Sunday, and tattie scones. He went on long, long walks. He always fell asleep on the sofa but said he was just ‘resting his eyes’. He ate any food I made him as a kid, no matter how inedible it was. He worked hard at all his jobs. His accent was a bit Scottish, a bit English, but all Dad. He never wore jumpers even when it snowed and he would claim “it’s because he’s Scottish”. He had the same leather, sheep skin coat for years and years. Sometimes, at night, I would sit at the table and do my homework whilst he cooked, we would talk and I would sit and drink capri suns. He said he hated our cats but he was their favourite. He wore those awful brown sandals that every Dad seems to have. He was a really good cook.

After nights out, his house was my first stop to have a chat with him before I went home.

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There isn’t much else to say. I don’t know what to do with all the worry I had for him. I just know that grief is love in a heavy coat, and I’ll wear that coat forever.

I was so blessed to have someone who loved me that much. It’s surreal and suffocating, I can’t believe I’ll never see him again.

Hold on very, very tight to your Dads.

And in the words of mine, “Enjoy yourself but not too much. Work hard. Love you.”

beth xo