It has been 15 years ago this month since my father died. The grief over this loss is as palpable today as it was that Super Bowl Sunday in 1996. Why so surprising? I’ve discussed this often with other women – friends, daughters of our clients, my sisters - who have lost their fathers as adults. What is it about this father/ daughter relationship? Why this terrible sense of emptiness so many years later, this chaos of emotions? Freudian references or Erickson’s stages of psychosocial development are not explanations for what this is about for some of us.
There seems to be so much more thrown into this mix. Whether the loss comes from a death, a divorce or an abandonment our fathers have held many roles in our lives. Sometimes the father has been absent. Those of us who have been fortunate to have had a positive relationship with our fathers travel on a very different journey. We have had fathers who have been our male role models, our protectors, our guides through an uncertain world, our supporters, our cheerleaders, our breadwinners. Whichever the role(s), these men have had profound influences on their daughters’ lives.
When we are 50, and our parent of 75 dies, it is expected. Not any easier to bear whether due to an illness or to aging. No matter how one is prepared for the loss when a parent dies it is truly a unique experience. It is a rite of passage that hurls us forward into our futures. We are suddenly aware that it is we who are the remaining generation of our family tree still living. And another realization becomes clear – even if we have been the caregiver to our parents before their deaths it is the parent of our youth and childhood we bury.
Our culture often treats grief as a luxury that one cannot dwell on rather than a normal and necessary part of life. We allow a spouse the opportunity to grieve but somehow diminish or dismiss the feelings of sorrow that adult children want/need to express at the loss of a parent. And the world becomes a very different place for some when left without our anchors.
Every year around my father’s Yartzheit I revisit Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues.”
“He was my North, my South, my East and West
My working week and my Sunday rest”
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