The First Year

A year ago my father died and the world as I knew it crashed down around me. So many people have said that after 'The First Year' everything gets easier. To a certain extent that is true, last year Christmas was so painful, with every little part of the holiday causing great sadness. This year I just feel heavy - it is strange that having a piece of yourself torn away can leave you with more weight to carry. This numb and heavy feeling has allowed me to try to return to my love of the holiday season, with a bit of a 'fake it until you make it' type attitude I am excited about Christmas again this year and looking forward to the new memories.

Time has healed some of the wound. Part of me is happy that I no longer think about my Dad every single day. This is because living away from my parents for more than a decade meant that I didn't really think about them at a daily frequency. So, to have a day or two here and there where I am not reminded of Dad or of my pain related to his sudden death is a bit of a relief and a return to a more normal state of being.

However, I feel with the passing of time I am losing my memory of him. I can no longer hear his voice in my head. I forget the way he phrased or said things. (Sometime, I can remember a bit of what his laugh sounded like.) I am actually really hoping that Aimee can still imitate him, I found her funny impressions so comforting last December. She helped me hear him again; this is something I have struggled with right from the start.

What I can't seem to forget it the sound of my uncle on the other end of the phone, telling me my dad had died in his sleep overnight. I can hear the exact inflection of his voice and can quote all the words said in the conversation. I can even hear (and to a certain extent picture it all in an out-of-body type fashion) my own reaction to the news. Which I am sure just sounded like raw shock and pain, if raw shock and pain sounds like someone saying/screaming, What?!? What!?! over and over. Just like that, with one morning phone call my dad was gone from my life and as each year passes, I worry that he is slowly going to be gone from my mind.

The feeling of losing my memories of him is making the progress of time more difficult. I have a frantic feeling, a fevered clawing at shards of memories, desperately trying to keep his memory alive and knowing that it will only get harder. So I feel like 'The First Year' has been a year of memories, with subsequent years being less so; and in that way the future looks harder than 'The First Year.'