Complicated, Infrequent, Maddening: Reflecting on my Dad’s Life & Death

 Sigmund Freud said that the most important day in a man’s life is the day his father dies. If so, that day for me was Wednesday, July 15. My dad turned 95 on March 5, when we last had a good long visit together. On Father’s Day he suffered a stroke, and spiraled down from there. I got to see him briefly, given Covid restrictions, 6 days before he passed.

   Let me work through my thoughts and emotions in front of you now. Helps me, as a writer, to do so in this way – and I suspect my experience of people’s sympathy might help all of us moving forward. With loving intentions, we speak words of comfort to one another. I understand well that when we do so, we inject, we transfer our own feelings about our own family into the stories of others. Surely they feel as I did or would. Comforting words are all comforting, but then at the same time some aren’t so comforting, or aren’t connected to reality, feeling like little pin pricks to fend off. I don’t fault any of the hundreds of people who’ve reached out to me. I am humbled, and so very grateful. I feel loved. My story with my dad probably explains why I need that – but then why everybody else does too.