Everyone knows the 5 stages of grief. Someone dies, those close to them grapple with the reality of the loss and eventually make their way through the stages. You see it in movies and television shows, you read it in books, or sometimes you hear it at a funeral service. But what happens when you’re grieving your own death? And the person that killed you, stabbed you in the back and twisted the knife as much as they could, is the same person you thought you could trust. You’d go through each stage like I did if it happened to you, especially if that person was your father.
May 20th, 2024. The day of my 18th birthday party. The decorations were up, guests were
slowly filtering in, everyone was chatting up a storm…everything was perfect. Then, I went up to my uncle and asked him where my dad was. That’s when the world stopped spinning.
“He didn’t tell you?” said my uncle. “He’s not coming.”
DENIAL |
Nothing is more humiliating than shedding tears in the bathroom on your birthday. Even worse, no girl should be ripping her dad’s name off the seating chart and throwing it out. Granted, my dad and I are (were?) about as close as the North and South poles, but he was still my dad. I wanted him there. When he said he didn’t want to come to avoid a fight with my mom, I told him to do what he thought was best. I never thought the best thing was to not show up at all. The image of my dad was dissipating. The dad I remember showed up to every birthday before this one and he gave me a card for all of those, at least.
So how long does it take to look at a person and realize you’re looking at someone entirely
different now? Exactly 18 years, 1 day, 7 hours, and 3 minutes.
ANGER |
Why didn’t he show up? Why couldn’t he have been there? Why can he text but not show? Why,why, why? I had the “why’s,” but not the “because” and that drove me insane. I think I had more anger than gifts: anger towards these unanswered questions, anger aimed at the world, and anger over the fact that he didn’t even call. I simmered in anger for days, weeks, even. However, I soon came to realize that trying to figure out my dad was like trying to put together a 1,000-piece puzzle with no pieces. That made me even angrier. I guess the real reason I was angry was because he was pushing me away before I could figure out if there were some—if any—hidden pieces to the puzzle that I could solve.
BARGAINING |
Maybe he didn’t mean it. That’s what I wanted to believe. Anything was better than the
alternative. I waited constantly for a simple text, a phone call, or just anything. I begged the
universe to have him send a sign of remorse, anything to show me how sorry he was. That was the problem. Despair is bad, but there is nothing worse than desperation. At least with
despair, there’s no hope at all. Having hope that things would change made me desperate enough to want to attempt to see it through.
DEPRESSION |
He never called. He never texted. He can show up to my graduation and brag, but not to my birthday. Do you know what it’s called when your heart stops saving as big of a piece of itself for someone else?
Disappointment. Disappointment is when instead of fighting for that piece of my heart, he let it shrink, and he let it break. Disappointment leads to depression because once your disappointment becomes immeasurable, it’s hard to contain. Even though there’s an end to this feeling, it can seem infinite when you’re drowning in it, day and night.
ACCEPTANCE |
I think my disappointment was a catalyst towards acceptance. I didn’t want to keep feeling
disappointed. I wanted to move on. The more I thought about the whole situation, the more
disappointed I felt, time and time again. It was an endless loop, one where I was falling deeper into a bottomless pit of darkness. I just wanted to move on. I reached for anything and grasped onto nothing but air. I reached out again—farther, longer, desperately—but I was reaching for something that wasn’t there. I could hear the cries, “Hold on, we’re coming to pull you out! Don’t move!” I could hear the shuffling of feet, looking for a crack; thumping, as if trying to punch at the darkness and break through. I was stuck, falling in limbo with no way out. More shuffling. More thumping. Mumbled whispers. Suddenly, a blinding light appeared, and I was pulled out of the loop.
That light was the family who did show up for me: my sisters, my aunt, my uncle and his friends, my grandparents, my stepdad and his family, and my mom. They were there through all the stages, but I was too blinded by the darkness to see the light. I was so focused on the person who put a knife in my back that I forgot to look at those who were there to clean the wound and stitch me back up. He didn’t show up, and he left me alone to bleed out—he had twisted the knife as much as he could have. When it was finally pulled out of my back, I saw things clearer in death than when I was alive. I saw who was there—and who wasn’t. Now that I am resurrected, I will never, ever forget that.
Everyone knows the 5 stages of grief but not how hard it is to go through them. Some make it through unscathed, healed, and ready to move on. Others don’t. I’m glad I was one of those to make it through. I wonder if my dad was, too.
The day I died was my 18th birthday.
