It took four months before I no longer cried, every single day, after the death of my dad. The first hours, days and weeks were pure, visceral pain; bumping up against hollow emptiness. Losing someone you love is a deep excavation, no one can warn you about the mass of yourself that you lose, all at once; a complete reshuffling of your atomic state. Molecules clinging for new positions around this huge new cavern inside you. I felt utterly detached: from the earth, from him, from myself.
Weeks later, I was howling at times like a wounded animal, frightened by my own undoing. My husband cut calls and meetings in their tracks, leaping through from our study in response to my fractured, keening cries, to find me bent over the kitchen table, or on the floor, unable to move or breathe.
It knocked me sideways, and I was unprepared. I still recall how relieved I was, sometime after the oppressive heat and relentless rain of July had let-up, when I sat down in my therapist’s office and declared I’d finally had a day where I didn’t cry. I thought I was broken, irreparably. How could I be feeling such pain, so raw, for so long? How could I be so dysregulated that I felt I no longer knew how I’d be, minute-to-minute? My trust in my acute body-mind awareness had been utterly shaken and I felt like an unsafe thing to myself.
It could be anything, a memory, a trigger-phrase, most often a song. I think writing memoir over the time that I lost him forced me to sit much closer with the feelings that come with a bereavement, to hold them up and inspect them, tug on the threads and see what unravels. I was deep-diving already, and this sent me into the abyss. There was light, and joy, at times, but mostly just black, pressing in on all sides.
In August, I physically broke. I had three long ASD shut-downs of the likes I’ve never known before. I’d been telling myself it was time, to get back out there – it’s a month full of events and social occasions in Edinburgh – but I was not ready, and my bodymind was doing it’s utmost to make sure I got the memo.
By the time September came round, it was all I could do to listen. Thankfully, the same month where the memoir timeline came full-circle, and I could put the heavy interrogation to rest for a while. I’ve realised that analysing areas of my life is harder work than I anticipated, and it’s taken a toll. The work I’ve been doing in therapy on top of this has been complex, layered, lead-heavy, and unprecedentedly eye opening. This work continues.
So we managed to get through the first, torturous Christmas without my dad, and by the new year I felt new energy, to put into this Substack, which I did for the first few weeks. But like any best laid plans, they gang aft aglay. Not helped by a stint in A&E for severe chest pain, followed by weeks of rest and anti-inflammatories.
There’s something about loss that really makes you take stock of where you’re at in life, and I felt certain that it was time for another adventure, another Rewilding, if you will, for it’s been too long. So my husband and I decided to realise a lifelong dream of mine to visit Arctic Norway to find the Northern Lights. We went in early February, and I can’t wait to share that experience with you on here very soon. Spoiler alert: we found it. (Oh my, did we find it).
I returned with my batteries brimming with stardust, and I’ve carried it with me, and I will continue to do so. These incredible encounters with nature are my greatest healers, and I pocket them with utmost gratitude.
The twenty-fourth of March marked the year anniversary of my dad’s death, and I’ve been laying low around it. I’m on the Other Side – they talk about this, those who have lost before us – the miraculous line in the sand where the grief shifts behind sea-glass, not as sharp anymore, nor as loud.
I think perhaps it’s about permission: to not remember him all the time, or to not feel bad when I don’t. For me, it’s more about choosing not to let my mind settle on it for too long, rather I let it glance off the surface of my grief, like the stones we skimmed off the water when I was little. The points of contact remind me it’s still there; that connection I feel so strongly to this person who no longer exists in the world. It won’t ever leave me. But I can tap in at my choosing.
I’ve been learning a lot more about the cosmos lately – tuning back in to my childhood obsession, and I’ve been taking comfort in the fact that we can only observe five-percent of the universe. We think we know everything, we create religion to fill in the gaps, but that’s a whole big ninety-five-percent of Who The Fuck Knows. I take my chances that my love for him is still tethered out there, somewhere unseeable, but equally present, in our infinite, more-than-likely-Multiverse.
After all, Space Is Deep, as dad would say (with a twinkle in his eye, as he referenced the lyric from a favourite prog rock band, Hawkwind).
I’m coming to realise I’ve been experiencing a far bigger, wider-reaching, state of rewilding than I could have possibly imagined, but I think that’s the point. We are never fully reclaimed by ourselves, we are always fruiting and growing, pruning what no longer serves, sending energy in and out in a perpetual exchange with our environment and circumstances at any given moment. We can only make assessments when we’ve moved a little farther ahead, and we can look back with clearer perspective.
We have to roll with the tide, carry what we can, and let go of what we can’t.
Through much deep, plate-shifting pain, I think I’m finding my way again.
I hope this brings some comfort to those who have lost and those who have still to. Grief is unique, and we must process it however we need. Wishing you love and light wherever you are x
A beautifully raw honest post Julie, thank you. I think one of my biggest fears is of the day I lose my father. Wishing you all the best in this journey through ☺️