My father died last Sunday and I struggle to comprehend the circumstances of his death as well as the mere fact of his death

[koungue]

My dad died last Sunday early in the morning. He contracted HIV six years ago which sent him spiralling down into severe depression as well as alcohol and benzos addiction. I was told he died peacefully in his sleep from a heart attack but there are inconsistencies surrounding his last day on Earth and I can’t help but wonder whether he really did die peacefully without knowing it, or whether he knew he was about to go and just let it happen. I got ahold of his phone and laptop and I find it utterly incongruous that he didn’t pick up a single phone call on Saturday despite several people calling him. He also didn’t use the Internet at all, either on his phone or laptop, which was not common for him, a retired man living alone. I was the last person to ever talk to him, on the phone on Friday the 8th. He sounded fine, miles better than he sometimes did when he was going through particularly rough patches, we talked for over an hour and he revealed to me a lifelong trauma that he’d carried for nearly sixty years and never talked to anyone about. He gave me a lot of life advice although that was not anything that he hadn’t said to me before so I don’t know whether he was just talking to me as a dad or as a dad who knew he was talking to his daughter for the last time. He told me that the only thing he desired was for me to attend his funeral but that was not the first time he’d said something like to me considering I live between my birth country and another one a 12hr flight away and even in my birth country we lived 1000km apart and were separated by the sea at that. He also said that when I visited him in April we’d take the convertible and ride through the mountains with our hair blowing in the wind so was he actually looking forward to that or was he just trying to end our conversation on a note of hope? This line haunts me. 

The grief I feel thinking about his last years being marred by shame, self-loathing, loneliness, alienation, addiction, and a strict refusal to ever reach out and get help, is like to choke me and the thought that he might have spent his last day on Earth alone and in pain and still refusing to call for help, either because he gave up on life or because he was afraid of being carted off to a hospital, further devastates me. My father was a complicated person and I’m a complicated person so our relationship was naturally anything but straightforward but we still loved each other unconditionally and shared many moments which shaped me as a person and are burned into my memories. The thought that he might not have known just how much I love him, how much I admire him, how much I’m going to miss him, because we were both too busy being caught up in our own baggage for me to properly express my feelings, breaks my heart. 

I’m also struggling with the very banal brand of existential dread that comes with being confronted with the death of a loved one who has quite literally up to now never not been involved in your life in some capacity. I went to his apartment and everything was just as it was before his death, external manifestations of his ridiculous quirks, his clothes, his unmade bed that he supposedly died in, his fridge full of food, a pack of my favorite coffee unopened, stored away for when I would visit, a list of things he wanted to look into, movies to watch, books to read, and I cannot wrap my head around the fact that all those traces of life were left by a man who is simply not here anymore. When I actually linger on the fact that he’s dead and try to grasp it my brain stutters in the same way that I think any human being’s brain stutters when trying to grasp the immensity of space. There’s a gulf between matter-of-factly thinking “my father is dead” or “the size of the current observable universe is something like 90 billion light years in diameters” and actually grasping and conceptualizing those facts. I’m not a religious or spiritual person so I don’t believe my father is somewhere watching over me or anything like that, I believe his consciousness has been snuffed out, no longer thinking or feeling or remembering. The clichés according to which he’ll continue to live on in my memories or through me for now do nothing to comfort me, as the dad who lives on in my memories and heart is not my dad, with his own inner world and thoughts and feelings and memories, but the mere image that I have of him inside my own inner world. 

Sorry for the wall of text and I’m grateful to anyone who’ll bother reading and sharing their own stories, thoughts & feelings. Although people around me are supportive only one of them has lost a parent and that was 20 years ago so I don’t feel like any of them can actually feel the despair I’m currently feeling, which is why I wrote this here.

[reader]

Dear koungue,

My deepest sympathies and condolences. I am so sorry for your loss. There is nothing to be sorry about and it is part of everyone's grief journey to share their experiences and express their pain and sorrow. It is terribly sad time and its hard to fathom we are on this Earth without our beloved parents. What you have written is very poignant and thoughtful. Like you, I find very little comforts me after losing my father. Even now a few years later, I don't know how to accept it and keep looking back to how I might have saved him or made things better. Everyone says it takes time to work through all our thoughts and feelings, but truthfully, I don't know if I will ever accept this loss. 

I continue to seek out additional supports through websites:

Grief Share

Grief in Common

Grief Healing Blog

What's Your Grief

Always know you are not alone and many people are with you.

 

[Cat2021]

Dear K, it has been a week since my dad died suddenly, and I flew oversea to be with my mother and father. In the end, he no longer wanted food or to talk nor to surf the web or email anyone. I spoke to him 4 days before his death and he told me he was tired and no longer wanted to battle on. I told him I understood, but this was a common conversation. He was 78 years old and had many illnesses. 

I guess I am still in shock, and did not attend the funeral due to covid. I have not cried, and I don't understand why. I loved my dad, we were the same, and I was his beloved daughter.  Maybe our brains can't fathom the loss yet. Maybe it's denial. Thank you for your post, it let me know I was not alone. Even though I feel that way. 

[MonkeysDaughter]

I’m sorry that you lost your father. My daddy died three weeks ago. I am going through the motions of each day but it doesn’t seem real. I can’t imagine a world without my daddy in it and he was the only family member who loved and accepted me as I am. Since his death, the drama between my mother and sister became so bad that I am not going to interact with them anymore. I didn’t just lose my dad; I don’t have any family now and it’s so very painful. 

[borbzgirl]

We are the same in the sense that I understand death means the person is completely gone, his conciousness, his feelings, they are all gone. So I find no comfort in delusions that my loved one is now happily fluttering over the rainbow... I respect everyone who believes in this, but I personally find no comfort in it. Which is why I just feel like being in a deep black hole with no light in sight, no hope. Because there's nothing that can change what has already happened. And that person is gone forever.

My dad died when I was 18 (I'm 35 now) but my boyfriend died 3 weeks ago which is why I'm here.

The only comforting words I can offer are... You will die too, you will become nothing too. Everyone will die. Nobody's special... We will all die... I know it's sick to find comfort in these thoughts, but there is literally nothing else that would comfort me more than knowing that no one is more special than my love. He may have died, but we will all die too.