The Loss Just Won’t Stop…

"When I was a young boy. My father took me into the city. To see a marching band..."

Welcome to the Black Parade, My Chemical Romance

Dear Emma,

The loss won’t stop. The day you were born, I sat in the emergency room staring through blurry eyes. I’d seen this view before. I said “It’s dad all over again.” The numbness in that moment, with those words, injected into my blood stream and pervaded every cell that makes up what, for now, is called me. I was under a tragic spell and cruelly locked-in pain and grief. In the days to come, healers all around me cured this disjointed malaise and torn me from the clutches of an all too familiar bewitchment that I had only just broken after nearly a decade. You see, Emma, it took me over ten years to resolve my grief over the death of my dad. A very damage man left behind a very damage son. I made a choice, though, to spend a decade fighting a ghost and not take responsibility for the true culprit consuming my happiness and soul; me. If there was a road map of how to mourn and heal wrong, then I’d be the most apt cartographer of this brutal and broken guide. But my Faith shined a light away from the dark clouds I called my constant companions. This equipped me to embrace you while we could and move through my loss of you in a steady, constant peace, rather than the static-driven, angry, anguished discord. This understanding and mindfulness coupled with my Faith allowed me to maintain this.

But I must caution something, my sweet girl, loss does not take a day off. Just because you’re gone and I’m going through the worst loss imaginable doesn’t mean I won’t lose again and in different ways. This was unexpected for me. I broke recently because of this and couldn’t figure out what was happening. It was only while talking with Mrs. L that this came into focus. Death is a great loss, but loss also comes with so many other faces. We might mourn those that leave this earth, but we also mourn those who are still here. It’s one big happy family of loss. That said, through my recognition of this and my lack of resilience dealing with the 31 flavors of loss life will dole out, I’ve been able to find my footing, again. This experience continues to teach me about my own capacity to both fall apart and put myself back together. I hold this capacity to be the ever-changing jigsaw man, I truly believe anyone else reading this does, too. If my words do or mean anything, hopefully it lets those reading this know, you can do this; you will carry on.

Love,

Dad