Grief

Today at church I was approached by a brave young man that dared hand me a booklet about grief because of the recent loss of my father. He may have done so as part of a church program, but I still admire his courage at being willing to approach a battle weary, tired and somewhat cynical and surly old Christian about an issue that we must all deal with at one time or another.

My initial thought was, "oh great, another book. All my life people have been handing me books and pamphlets to help me solve my personal problems and issues. Here's another one to throw on the pile. It probably won't work either."

And you have no idea how true this is. My biggest life issues have been my battles with depression and my daily, even hourly, SSA temptations. My life has been one long fight with these things and with God over the solutions. More about that some other time....or maybe not.

Grief however, was never a major issue for me, either now or in the past, because I spent so much time trying to kill my feelings and emotions over the other two things. I may have needed to grieve many things, but I always tried to kill those emotions because I needed all my strength to fight more important things.

I have buried grandparents, aunts and uncles and even my Mom. I miss them all and I did grieve when they left me to go be with Jesus. I especially miss my Mom. That one hurt in many ways and one of them was the grief of what she left me with. Five years and nine months ago she left me with my father. Despite his insistence to the contrary, I knew he would never be able to live alone. He had dementia, he had epilepsy, he had a-fibrillation of the heart. Some call it congestive heart failure. He could not be trusted to take his meds or he would take them at the wrong time or he would take too much. He could not pay his own bills. He could not grocery shop. And there was not much he could cook for himself besides instant oatmeal and Stouffer's macaroni and cheese. So I moved in with him to help him with all those things while I continued to work full time.

It was a long and wearying road. His stubbornness and continuing mental decline was quite painful to watch and experience, but I had help from an unlikely place; someone else that my Mom had left to both of us. It was a little 40 lb Wheaten Terrier named Oliver. He was still a crazy puppy when Mom left us and he did not adjust well to her absence. He chewed up quite a bit of furniture before he fully matured and Dad wanted to get rid of him. I remember advising Dad at the time that he would need that dog and that's about how it happened. Oliver served to help Dad focus and keep him active. He came to love Oliver and Oliver loved him. I too loved the little dog.

It was my thought, after Dad died, that I would have Oliver to keep me company for many years. This was not to be. Two weeks before Dad died, Oliver got sick. When the vet saw the symptoms, he knew almost immediately that it was a genetic and inevitably fatal disease common to Wheatens. He tried to treat it, but his attempts failed. A week after Dad died, I had to have Oliver euthanized because he was suffering so much and getting progressively weaker.  And so then I was alone.

The question remains, did I grieve? Or grieve properly? The answer I have will anger many and cause them to see me as an ungrateful child. Others will be sad for me. And a handful will understand what I am about to say.

I have mentioned this before. My father and I never had much of a relationship in our life together. It was always more like we were brothers in competition and not father and son. I did discover before he passed that I did love him. The quality of that love is strained though by the fact that I have been grieving for both of us long before Dad ever died.

I grieved and grieve the loss of what could have been. I have grieved because I never knew if he loved me. He would do things for me that fathers do, but we never talked. He was unable to express his feelings to me or toward me. It was like we were from two different planets by the time I was a teenager.

I was sad most of my early life because I wanted my Daddy back; the one the wrestled with me and tickled me when I was two, that taught me how to tie my shoes when I was three and brought me a half a gallon of chocolate milk from the place he worked.

I'm not sure when it happened or maybe I am and I don't want to talk about it, but there is something that separated us. A wall went up and by the time I was four years old, he was resenting me and I was not liking him very much either. I can't describe how that felt and I wish I knew why we could not fix it, but we never did.

I firmly believe this played a part in my other life issues; the depression and the SSA and all the other crap including a strained relationship with my heavenly Father; something He and I are only now working out. I hope we have more time before He takes me too.

All that brings me to this. It was in my mind after Mom died that this would be a time where Dad and I could work out our differences and I could be of help to him at the same time. It never really happened that way though. We did get closer, but he would always fight me when I tried to help him make rational decisions about things. I came to believe that he did develop a deeper appreciation for me before the end, but I am not sure of that. The bottom line is that's all a son ever wants from his father - approval and appreciation. It was never really forthcoming and it was all very frustrating and dissatisfying.

So my grief for Dad is over our lack of relationship and love and friendship. I have grief, but I also have guilt. I feel like I bear some responsibility for the failure and in some ways, I'm sure I do. But the thing I feel the most guilt and grief about is this.

I do not miss him. I am not sorry he is dead. I am relieved that he is gone.

It was all made worse when I realized after I lost Oliver that I missed him and wanted him back. I missed my dog, but not my Dad.

Talk about guilt and grief.

As my friend often says, "it is what it is."

I do not know if I can work through this in any satisfactory way. Dad and I are just a mess. I believe there was something messy about him before I was ever born. In some ways, his pain became mine.

Dennis and I are alike in many ways. Something I learned by living with him these last 5 years and nine months. We are both stubborn and refuse to admit when we are wrong.

I still may have time to correct this in my life with the help of the Lord. Maybe I can do it for both of us.            

Anyway, thanks Tim for the book. Page 21 and 22 hit home. If they hadn't, none of this would have come out. I hope the boil has been lanced and healing can commence now. Let's see how it goes. Apparently I have three more books coming.