Grief, Loss & Advice

This past Father’s Day was the first Father’s Day without my father being alive. The first one which I wasn’t able to talk to him and wish him a happy one. 7 days after that was my birthday, which is also my dad’s birthday. The first one in my life spent without my dad here on the planet with me. It’s a lot to handle in a week’s time. It was weird, honestly.

It’s been 9 months since Billy Nosal died. I’ve gently swayed from shock to anger back to shock with some grief thrown in. Sometimes I allow the memories to come in. Sometimes I do my best to block them and refocus on something, anything else. It all depends on the mood I’m in. And I can be moody (shhhh, don't let that get out). Especially when navigating such a tremendous loss. I realize I am not alone. My sister, our family and my dad’s friends are still reeling from the loss of him. My cousin also lost her dad a day or so before I lost mine. We’re in a strange club now. 

When you lose someone close to you, you have a year of firsts. The first of many holidays without that person. Their first birthday without them. Your first birthday without them. Maybe a first wedding anniversary without them. And then you hit the biggie: The first anniversary of the day they died. I have just over 3 months until we get to that one. I dread it. Just as I dreaded Father’s Day and my birthday. Yet I know these days must come and go for as long as I am alive. And it is those of us who are lucky to be alive who experience all the pain. 

I know I haven’t processed his death just yet. And how I know this is because I have only cried a few times. It’s as if I am holding off on the crying. Like I’m controlling it for now. I know the day is coming. I’ll have one of those epic breakdowns of inconsolable weeping, maybe even more than one. I just hope I’m not in Walmart when it happens. I think my fear is that if I start, I won’t be able to stop. And Walmart is no place for that.

I still tense up when I scroll by his picture in my phone. Or his sign-in for an account of his that I had. Or when Facebook alerted me to his birthday on June 25th. I just stared at it for a moment. I couldn’t handle going onto his page to see if anyone wished him a happy birthday. I feel sick to my stomach when I get notices from probate court. They call him “the decedent”, which is appropriate but horrible. I have amazing friends who are very other-worldly and have told me that my dad is with me. Especially when I’m driving. I hold onto that and talk to him a lot while in the car (when I’m not swearing at all of the left-lane lurkers or idiot texters, that is). 

Loss is palpable. Such a huge loss is dramatic. It’s indescribable. My dad had such a major role in my life. Yes, we had some complications, as all families do. But he was never out of my life. And now he is. I’ve had some life-impacting situations that have happened since he died. Previous to October 2, 2022, I would have called him to tell him about them and he would have gotten mad on my behalf, because that’s what dads do for their daughters. But he would have given me great advice. He would have reassured me. He would have told me those people are assholes (he would have been correct)  and then plotted some sinister revenge…because that is also what (some) dads do. The truth is that after all of these years, I have his advice in my head. I know what he would have said. And I can hear him saying it. But, of course, it’s not the same. I will go out on a limb to say that my dad was my biggest cheerleader. He was also my biggest critic. He gave out advice with such authority that I don’t think there was a situation on earth that hadn't happened to him. 

He had a friend who had a kid who was paralyzed from jumping off a dock in a lake or who was killed in a car accident from not wearing a seat belt or got arrested and served time for having pot in his house (First of all-I think this was true, second of all-I haven’t smoked pot since I was 17-18, so this was some old advice, third of all…he had pot in his house for as long as I can remember!!) or shot his foot off when handling a gun or fell off a ladder and nearly died or…you name it. He told us a lot of stories about what not to do or how not to handle things. And, I might say, some of them still fill me with fear to this day. Perhaps I have even passed along those stories to my own offspring…who can say?

As I process these last 9 months and turn the corner toward 1 year, I realize it hasn’t gotten any easier. Not yet. It’s still so new and I still feel so very raw. We went to Lake George this past weekend for my birthday. I wanted to spend that day doing something fun to take my mind off of it also being my dad’s birthday. Well, we ended up in the middle of a torrential downpour, in a castle, on the top of Whiteface Mountain, where they had to shut down access to the summit (I’m sorry-27 floors above where we already were, in an effing elevator? It wasn’t a major loss) because of thunder and lightning, which also meant our amazing views were obscured. Fun? Maybe not. But we sure did make a memory. And maybe that’s just the key to grief and loss. We need to continue on and make new memories. I know for sure it’s what my dad would have wanted.