When Breath Ceases
When the breath of a loved one ceases, the pain begins. And it does not end. It remains, in different forms, to different degrees, for the rest of our borrowed time on earth.
Since November 29, 2011, the day breath left my father’s lungs, neither I nor my life have been the same. That is the day my heart broke. It broke and it can never be rearranged to be as it once was.
My father died less than three months after a diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It was very sudden, and very traumatic. Although I was thankfully able to say goodbye to my father, I did not have the chance to truly process what his diagnosis meant. I remember asking my aunt how many stages there were and when she softly said, “Four,” even then I did not fully grasp that my father’s death was imminent.
Nearly a year to the day prior to my father’s death I had given birth to a son, my only child, and his first grandchild. When it became clear that I would not be able to share my parenting journey with my father, a deep heaviness set in. A heaviness I carry every day.
That heaviness is in large part about what my father, and my son, lost. My father adored my son — he doted on him — relishing in the awesome awareness that in his arms was a life intricately connected to his own. I also loved seeing my father and son together — it felt miraculous to see my own parents with my and my husband’s creation.
I had thought we would have years to share this magic. We did not and as I raise my son, and witness the loving bond he shares with my mother, I feel tremendous sadness that the same is not true for my father. There is always a space that would have been occupied by my father — a space that will never be filled again.
Despite the number of years I have lived as a fatherless daughter, and the number of years I have been a mother, there is a dull ache in my chest, an acute reminder of what was lost and what could have been.
I take solace in the knowledge that I was blessed to have had a wonderful father who raised me into adulthood, who saw me married to a loving, kind, loyal man, and who saw me become a mother. I also take solace in knowing that in ethereal ways, my father’s essence remains.
But the hard truth is that I miss my father — and I always will. I will miss him until the day my own breath ceases.
