I had no idea what to expect when my dad died. I’ve read a lot about grief but it’s something that is deeply unique to the one experiencing it and something you simply cannot understand until you experience it. I’ve read that it comes in waves, that time does heal, that eventually you adapt to your life without them and move forward. I’ve also read that it never really goes away, that there is no “getting over” the death of a loved one. I like to imagine that the grief gets smaller and smaller still, so that you can carry it with you instead of being consumed by its infinitely vast void.

The truth is, it’s hard to say where I am in my grief right now. It just happened a few weeks ago, not that there’s a timetable for grief. In the immediate days after he was gone, it was surreal. I told those who asked how I was doing that it felt like it wasn’t real life: this is something that happens to other people, not us, not yet.

It was as if my family and I were suspended in a sort of protective bubble, floating above our bodies on earth, our bodies who were going about the business of…what you do when someone dies. We busied ourselves with all the details of making arrangements and decisions about how to celebrate my dad’s life in the midst of a worldwide pandemic – you know, the usual.

We were (and still are) experiencing our loss personally while also rallying around our mom and each other because it’s a collective, shared loss, of course. Being together helps. Loving each other helps, crying together helps, talking about dad helps. I suspect it always will. I’ve never been more grateful to have heard dad’s stories a million times over the course of my life. We can all recite them pretty much verbatim. We teased him, mercilessly sometimes, about repeating the same stories to us over and over. Now we understand that it’s a gift he gave to us.

How we decided to honour my dad, both privately and publicly, was beautiful and perfect and the exact right thing. And yet, it feels like it’s not enough.

Well, of course it’s not enough. Enough would be having him here with us. It was too soon, it wasn’t his time yet. But the universe had other plans for dad whether we were ready or not. And there’s nothing to be done. He is gone, and there is a giant hole in our family.

I’m surrounded by him everywhere in my home, in my memories, in my experiences. It’s both comforting and devastating. I’m trying to focus on the comforting, but I do feel the devastation too. When I was cleaning up some stuff on my balcony the other day, I looked up and saw the lattice partition dad made for me just this summer. When I was reorganizing my kitchen, I re-discovered the hole he had drilled right through the drywall when he was mounting the shelf he made for me. That one made me laugh – we laughed a lot when it happened. I remember telling him that whenever I looked at that hole I would always think of him. I was right.

I recently put together a bar cart I ordered. Putting furniture together is not my forte. But I was determined to do it by myself – I’m not sure why. To prove that I could do it? To feel like I accomplished something? I hadn’t had that feeling in a long time, so maybe that was it.

It took me three hours. The instructions said it should take about 30 minutes. There was some swearing, lots of talking to myself, some laughing at myself, at my total ineptitude at this particular task. And there were tears. Probably five or six times, I got frustrated and wanted to give up and I burst into tears just wishing my dad was there to help me.

I miss my dad. I wish he was here. But his sweet moment has come and gone and I will carry him in my heart for the rest of my life, until my sweet moment in this world ends.

It’s all decided for us, this world has only one sweet moment set aside for us.

– Queen, ‘Who wants to live forever’