Today marks 20 years since my father died.
It was a beautiful spring day. A sudden reprieve from the symptoms of winter. Like many others, my father took the opportunity to take out his motorcycle and play a little, show off a little, live a little.
But it killed him.
He was 38 years old. I was 16. My brother was 12.
After 20 years, I’m almost the same age as him. I’ve missed him longer than I knew him.
I’m a mother now. I have a daughter and a son, just like him.
I turned the month of April into something beautiful. Fell in love with a boy. Got a degree. Adopted a dog. Bought a home. Married a man. Named our daughter in his honour.
We talk about him all the time. The kids feel like they know him. They know that our dog is with him now, that their spirits protect us. That death is normal and natural, but we must keep ourselves safe. Death ends a life, but not a relationship.
Its hard to say, and harder to hear: I have a lot to thank for losing him.
Its always uncomfortable when people learn that I lost my father at such a young age. But when I lost my father, I gained a stronger relationship with my mother and my brother. I gained the appreciation that life can be short, that people won’t be in my life forever, that I need to make my life something meaningful.
I attended grief group and met other teens who lost their family members and I decided that I wanted to help others one day. So I became a counsellor, a teacher, and now, almost a psychologist.
While my brother and I attended grief group, my mom spoke to other parents. She met a man with two kids who lost his wife too. Now he’s my father too. He introduced me to the boy I married, and is the grandfather of our children too.
I believe that everything happens for a reason.
I made meaning out of losing him. It was tragic. It was hard to graduate without him, get married without him, become a mother without him. But I have so much to thank him for.
My family.
My kids.
My career.
My entire life as I know it was shaped by losing him. It’s a humble, bittersweet sort of gratitude.
People always tell me that he would be proud of me.
Of course he is.
He shaped me.
Losing him was the beginning of so many things.
Somehow. He’s here in all of them.
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