For Your Perspective

The day your dad dies you will be seventeen years old. You will be in the middle of creating a bullet journal page for the upcoming year. You will be sitting in front of your couch and making a habit tracker page. You will use hearts as the markers for February. You will forget to fill it in as the time passes.

You will be on day 13, you’ll draw a heart with a red marker and write a small number 13 in the middle of the heart. Your house will have a long hallway that connects to the laundry room. The laundry room will have a door that leads out to the garage.

Your dad will have gone outside earlier because every winter he will attach a plow to his 4wheeler and plow the neighborhood driveways. This act of kindness will always stem from his selflessness. He will be refueling his 4wheeler and he will have an aortic dissection. Your dad will die while being kind.

You will hear the laundry room door open from the garage. You will hear your neighbor yell at your mother to call 911. You will never start the heart containing February 14th. You will remember every second of that moment. Your mom will tell you to come get the dogs, and when you do, you will see your dad. You will hear him screaming in pain. The world will pause, you will swear that the birds have stopped chirping and everything has gone silent. You will have the memory of your dads scream etched into every crevice of your brain.

The day your dad dies you will go back inside, not knowing that was the last time you would ever see your father. Your neighbor will come over, she will make grilled cheese. You won’t eat anything else for three days after. You will call your grandparents and tell them that their son has been taken away by an ambulance and you are not sure what is happening.

The day your dad dies, your mom will come home from the hospital. You will think that she is coming to get him clothes. She will tell you that he has died. You will fall on the cold laminate floor. Your mother will pick you up and tell you to stop crying. Your mother will tell you he wouldn’t want this. It is important you remember that your father is dead and he does not have a say anymore. You will spend the next six years holding back your tears and apologizing for crying. Your eldest sister will come home, your mother will break the news to her and she will scream. Your best friends mom will sit on the couch while you sit on the floor. She will cover your ears with her hands when your sister starts to scream. You will note that she did not tell your sister to stop crying.

The day your dad dies you will sleep in the living room with your mother and your sister. You won’t sleep at all really. You will look up, and your childhood cat Blossom will be sitting on the beam above you. You will laugh. You will think about how your father used to tie fabric and loop it around that beam to create a makeshift swing. You will think about how your father is dead.

You won’t understand why your dad died when you were seventeen. You still won’t understand it six years later. You will still have a gut reaction to call him when something happens with your car. You will reach to your phone and then your stomach will sink and you will remember that your father is dead.

The worst part of your grief will be how angry it makes you. You will turn the anger inwards. You will hurt yourself over and over. You will realize that this grief is intertwined with every nerve and vein in your body. You will be reminded often that when your dads heart stopped beating, part of yours did too.

When your dad dies, you will not be religious. You will not believe in fate. You will not think that everything happens for a reason. You will come to understand that modern culture has made us believe that we must find a reason for the death. That our grief has changed us for the better! Modern culture will tell you that yes, they died, but oh man, how beautiful is the world still! You will refuse to subscribe to that pattern of thinking.

When your dad dies you will get the words “strange beauty” tattooed on your arm. It will be from a song that goes, “and when you are gone, the rest of us have to carry on but the world it’s lost its strange beauty. You will also get the word “persevere” tattooed on your opposite arm. It will be from a song that goes, “I’m tired of trying to find some sort of meaningful thing, in making sense of such unspeakable loss.

When your dad dies you will never be the same. You will never be seventeen again. Modern culture will tell you that feeling certain ways are not acceptable. You will press down your grief a lot. You will try to make those around you feel as comfortable as you can within your loss.

When it has been six years since your dad died, you will not be grateful. You will not feel like you have grown from your loss. You will still feel as if you are an angry seventeen year old. And yet, you will see yourself get up everyday, work two jobs, take care of yourself and your cat. You will prioritize self care and you will try to laugh, and try to be a good friend, daughter, and sister.

When your dad dies, you will miss him so much that your teeth will hurt. You will feel like your grief is a cancer. You will wish that you could take a steak knife and carve it out. Instead, you will enter another year, another day, and another second without your dad. And it will suck. And it is not fair at all.