Grief will have its way with us, whether we take room for it or not.

My father died while I was teaching overseas. I dropped everything and hopped on the next plane I could get. I arrived home a day before the funeral. Then my parent’s home was inundated with relatives and friends, flowers, and baked meals. By the end of the week, mom and I were alone in her home with a dozen vases of dead flowers and a pile of unclaimed casserole dishes. It took us two weeks to drink through all the bottles of wine in the home and two months to close out all my father’s accounts. Once he was officially deleted from every institution in town, I hopped back on a plane and finished out my two year teaching contract. Instead of letting myself feel more misery, I put my grief on hold. It was great to throw myself totally into teaching and the various outreaches.

Even though I thought I had moved on, my grief was waiting for me at home. When I came back to my hometown, I got a job at working in a back office where I spent the next three months crying every day at my desk. My grief had been waiting for me as fresh as the day it was packed away at the bottom of my luggage. You have to make space for sadness or it will follow you around.

Life moved on. The gaps between thinking about and missing my Dad grew. I missed him at my wedding and when my children were born. I miss him in the beginning of November. It’s been almost 20 years since he passed, I can hardly believe it. I am grateful for the person he was and what part of him lingers in me and my brothers.