Two Years

It feels like just yesterday that I said my last goodbye to Dad, but when I think seriously about it, a lot has happened since the 16th September, 2009. I learned how to organise a funeral, I thought a lot about death and mortality and politics and society, I started writing my thesis again, I produced a play and took it on tour, I started to learn how to play a ukulele, I started to learn how to keep a garden alive, I started to learn how to collaborate properly, I became a vegetarian, I travelled abroad with my mother, I travelled abroad alone, I became an artist, curator and writer, I learned to take risks, I reopened myself to the world, I fell out of love, and I fell in love again.

When I think about it now, I think these activities of the last two years of my life are motivated by grief. I had to find ways to stay alive and present in the world in the face of such loss. I had to figure out what to do in order not to fall over in a heap.

Dad died two years ago today. I remember when he died cards came from everywhere expressing sympathy, but sometimes we received empathy cards. Often the empathy cards would say quite clearly that while they are sorry for the loss, they wanted us to know that ‘it doesn’t get any easier’. I felt as though such cards were welcoming mum and I into an exclusive club; a club for those struck by insurmountable grief, giving us the opportunity to suffer terribly forevermore along with them. This filled me with fear and dread: ‘It never gets any easier?’ I thought, ‘How will I survive?’ Two years on I guess I can say that they are right, it doesn’t get easier having lost the person. That person has gone and, as we know, no amount of wishing or hoping brings them back. But what those cards didn’t say was that if you can find a way to keep that person alive through yourself, that difficulty becomes manageable; they remain alive in the way they guide your actions, in the way you trust what they taught you and act accordingly. If this is true then I have my father to thank for the last two years of my life even though he wasn’t to help me through them. These were two of the most difficult and incredible years of my life so far. I wish he was here to share them with me, but that is impossible because since he died I have lived for him, rather than with him.

My dearest Dad. I love you. I miss you. And thank you, for everything.

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