The Weight

You know, losing Mom was really hard. Watching your best friend slowly be eaten away by a disease that you knew would take them eventually was awful. They gave her 14 months, and she gave us 16. It was hard, but we knew it was coming.

Losing Dad was unexpected. Mom’s death was like a slow weight constantly pushing down on us. Dad felt like a boulder just dropped right on top of us. It was quick and painful and hurt in a completely different way.

I don’t think he was in any pain. It happened in his sleep, and consensus seems to be that’s probably the best way to go. But that’s the thing I have to keep telling myself—it’s when, not if, you go. It’s inevitable. It will happen to everyone, no matter how much you wish it wouldn’t or could somehow avoid it.

I sometimes joke that if vampirism were real, I would be the first in line for a chance to live forever. But as far as I know, right now, that’s not an option.

That’s why everyone always says to cherish the time you have together and make the most of it. I don’t know if I really did that as well as I could have, but Dad did.

He never missed an opportunity to tell us he loved us or how proud he was of us. He was there, no matter what. So reliable, in fact, that him not replying to a Snapchat I sent him from the Eric Hutchinson concert I was at, and then missing my phone call the next morning for our normal weekly Friday phone call, immediately made me know something was wrong.

I spent all Friday calling, texting, sending funny videos, and basically acting like it was any other Friday—but I knew.

My heart goes out to my sister, who had to go check on him and find him lying in his easy chair, just looking like he was taking a nap. I don’t know if I would have been able to survive being the one to find him. My anxiety is eating me up enough as it is. I think if I had actually seen his body, it would have been game over for me by now.

That’s the nasty thing about depression or anxiety. They can just slowly eat away at you. You might not physically be doing any harm to yourself, but mentally, you’re poisoning yourself.

In the last month, I’ve been to the doctor twice for aches, pains, and intense stomach problems. Nobody was really worried about anything physically serious. I did all the labs, and they came back looking good, minus a stupid vitamin D deficiency. But really, they just kept asking if I’d ever considered talk therapy or starting a medication to help…

I’ve dealt with anxiety my entire life, but I’ve always had it under control—or at least what I thought was under control. So I guess when you start losing control, and your normal coping techniques don’t work anymore, and it gets to the point that it’s causing physical problems, you have to suck it up and go talk to somebody, huh?

I guess that’s what all the cool kids are doing anymore—talking about their feelings.

I don’t like talking about my feelings. I joke that I like to put all those things in this pretty little box in the back of my mind. Except now the box is too small, there’s too much to put in, and everything that doesn’t fit just keeps spilling over.

And currently, I just keep dumping it on my husband. Which, bless his heart, he would bear any and all things I would ask him to. But that’s not fair. He has his own burdens to carry. I cannot just expect him to hold on to all of mine as well… because he would. He would do that for me.

So I get to go talk to somebody.

They used to call them “shrinks,” but I’m hoping it’s more like a cleanser. Just clean it all up in there. Make things run smoothly again. Have nice, peaceful, clear thoughts that aren’t so weighed down by all the muddied mess.

I have this little mantra that I say to myself when I’m trying to make myself feel better:

“It’s okay. It will be okay. You will be okay.”

But sometimes, for things to be okay, you have to actually do something about them. You have to ask for help. You have to put in the work before you can see any results.

So, instead of trying to lift this boulder on my own, I’m going to go find the tools to break it down piece by piece until, one day, it’s this beautiful palm stone that I can just carry around in my pocket.

A thing that was once so heavy, ugly, and burdensome will then become a tool itself—to smooth the worries away.

…

And maybe that’s what I’m supposed to learn from all of this. Not that I have to stop missing them or somehow make this loss hurt less, but that I have to learn how to carry it differently.

Today marks one year without my Dad. One year since that boulder dropped. And somehow, here I am, still standing underneath it, trying to figure out how to move it.

I know he would tell me he loves me. He’d tell me he’s proud of me. And I think he’d probably tell me to quit worrying so damn much and go do something about it.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to take this thing that feels impossibly heavy and, piece by piece, learn how to carry it. Maybe someday it won’t feel like a boulder at all. Maybe it will ll become something I can hold in my hand—a reminder of how much I loved him, how much he loved me, and how even the heaviest things can eventually become something we learn to carry.

It’s okay. It will be okay. I will be okay