This week has been rough and I’m not entirely sure why. My guess is Father’s Day has a lot to do with it, although the weeks prior weren’t much better. Everywhere I turn, there seems to be pictures of fathers playing ball with their sons, or hoisting them up onto their shoulders, or of complete families having picnics. Then there are the obligatory stories about the best gifts to get Dad. Or worse, best crafts kids can make Dad just in time for Sunday.
Luckily, Logan is oblivious. Aside from asking a few weeks ago who would be his Dad, he hasn’t really made any mention of it. When his nursery school teacher asked him who he wanted to make a special gift for, he quickly rattled off two names. I guess, in this weird sort of way, he’s lucky.
Today I read this essay by Katie Couric’s daughter, Ellie Monahan, who wrote about the upcoming holiday and the loss of her father. One line struck me: “I have to admit I was surprised to find myself feeling anything, for while losing my father to colorectal cancer in 1998 wasn’t easy, living without him for the past 14 years has been easier, made manageable by the fact that his absence has become the norm in our household, all my sister and I have ever really known.”
This life, without Nolan, is all Logan has and will ever know.
She also quotes one of my favorite writers, Joan Didion: “Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be… Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”
Anyone who has experienced grief knows how those words ring so true. There are holidays I dread weeks in advance, and yet I don’t shed a tear. And others, like this Father’s Day, where everything simply reminds me of loss, no matter how many times I remind myself of how much Logan and I have.
I can’t explain it. I can’t reason with it. So I am just dealing with it. Until I can find my way back to the dailiness of life.
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