13 years

& moments of totality.

There’s no instruction manual on how to grieve someone you have a complicated relationship with, especially when that person is your father. The past 13 years have been marked by many beautiful moments remembering my dad and many painful ones missing him—and cursing him. Each year this day marks my “grief anniversary,” the day grieving him began. There is no timeline for loss. There isn’t a day in which you’ll wake up and be “over it.” It’s a life sentence. A strangely beautiful one, if you ask me.

This loss continues to be a reminder of how fleeting life is—that there is so much to be missed. While I’ll miss my dad every day that I continue to exist on this Earth, I am grateful for the gifts my grief has given me. It’s grown flowers in the darkest parts of me and is a kind (sometimes unkind) reminder of the one truth we all share: life is finite and infinite all at the same time. We don’t live for long and we live forever.

I am learning to embrace the thinness between light and dark—the fine line between mourning and celebrating. It is between those two seeming paradoxes where I most often find myself. Every time something draws to an end, another thing is also beginning. It’s not a forced position and it’s not a completely sad one either. Maybe, it is peace? It’s acknowledging that no part of this is easy, yet choosing to keep on embracing it anyways. It’s knowing that people are deeply flawed and their lives so fragile, but seeing the best in them anyways. Because I am one of them too.

I experienced my first total solar eclipse on Monday. I was lucky to attend Vampire Weekend’s show in Austin (watch the full show). There was much anticipation in the air—I could sense it as soon as we arrived. Collectively, we didn’t know what to expect. Right before the moments of totality were to begin, Ezra announced that they were going to take a break so they could witness, and respect, the rare celestial event. He told us he hoped we were with people we loved. As they sky darkened, I couldn’t believe it. It was happening—it felt like the most peaceful storm in the world was looming. We were all looking up at the sun & moon together; we were in awe together. Not just us; not just me; not just the people I had come with. Not just the crowd we were among. Not just the venue, or the parking deck filled with people behind us, or the city, or the state. All of us. We cheered because we experienced it together and because it was a little bit of magic. It was spiritual; something beyond this realm. In those brief moments of dark, in those still moments, all I could feel was wildly alive and overwhelmingly not alone.

I joked after the sun came out again, after the moon moved quickly out of it’s way, that I didn’t know how to go on. How does one go on with life after such a life changing event?! But I meant it. It was one of those moments where there is clear before and after. There was a me before X and then a me after X. There was a me before losing my dad and a me after. There was a pain I didn’t know, and then all of a sudden, there was a pain I wish I never knew. But with this pain came so much else.

I often have to remind myself that there will be more losses, more grieving, more pain. There will also be more joy, more peace, more love. The totality and finality of it all is so strangely beautiful.

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