Grief had me in a chokehold. I couldn’t breathe.
My dad was gone.
Two months before he passed, I assumed he’d be around for decades. It all happened so fast.
Disease ravaged his brain, stole his ability to speak. Then took away his life like a thief in the night.
“They” always say:
Don’t take life for granted. Treat every moment like it’s the last. It could all be over in the blink of an eye.
And I always knew that intellectually. But Dad’s death forced me to learn it emotionally.
Dad and I often ran the Turkey Trot 5K together. This was my first time running it without him by my side.
I was numb. I was bewildered. I was lost.
It seemed like life itself was going stark raving mad. The same week my dad died, in a wrong place/wrong time type situation, I got assaulted by a disturbed individual I’d never even met before.
He spit on me. Shoved me. Threatened to shoot me. On the inside, I’m thinking: Dude, my dad is dying. Why now? And really though… why ever?
Sometimes, it felt like the universe was having itself a grand old cackle at how seriously I took everything.
Before winter was over, my cat died of cancer.
Right around my birthday my best friend stopped taking his meds, which led to a psychotic break that he may not ever come back from.
What even is this life, man? I’m in the wrong timeline. What’s the fucking safe word?
Grief abounded. Heaviness overtook. Impermanence dominated.
And I started to realize, I needed to make some changes.
I needed to be more aligned with who I actually am.
Because grief isn’t just about losing people and pets or seeing friends and their families go through heartbreaking hardships.
Grieving also happens when I stop nourishing my own dreams, and they wither and die.
When I can’t bring myself to imagine my own potential anymore.
When I miss out on opportunities because I’ve turned “scraping by” into a whole-ass lifestyle.
Yeah, it’s true, don’t take other people for granted because they could be gone when you least expect it.
But don’t take your own ideas, passions, talents, and hopes for granted either.
Because you might go to look for them one day. You expected they’d always be there waiting for you.
But just like everything else, they are fleeting, too.
Everything in its rightful time and place.
For what truly matters, that time is now. The place is right here.
Because scraping by was never the dream. Not for me. And maybe not for you either.
And that right there is when all the pain starts to shine.
The sadness and self-pity transform into arrows that point ahead. This is the bed of ash from which the phoenix rises.
PS: If this post resonated, you might also like Sacred Tender—a free collection of poems I wrote during my season of loss. These poems helped me heal, and I’d be beyond honored if they helped someone else too.