two steps forward, one step back

"Springing forward" was my dad’s favorite. He loved using up every minute of daylight – when we were younger, spring daylight savings time meant more time to play outside when he was home from work, more time to get dirty, to breathe fresh air, to roller-blade or bike or walk with mom and Sam, our beloved golden.

I could feel dad in the way the light poured in my window from the west tonight, as I drove home from work. Sunset feels different after springing forward, as spring and summer approach, the sun hangs longer on the horizon, and it reminds me of so much he loved.

They say it’s a three year roller-coaster, this thing called grief. A minister told me that, about a month after Dad died.  “The first three years are the hardest.” I remember thinking, three years? That may as well be forever. This will forever be hard.

I also remember a few people telling me this will get easier with time. And though I know they’re right in some ways, it still fired me up on the inside. It’s not ever going to be easy, life without my dad. Who are you to dare to tell me that? But I’m sure I’ve told others that, before I knew about this bone-crushing grief. I hope they forgive me for careless words.

So it’s been a year and a half, since Dad’s accident. 18 months. If the three-year-theory is true, we’re halfway there. And I see a lot of truth in what Josef said – this is a continual roller coaster, but the highs stay high and the lows get less and less low. Or less and less often. Or both.

Saturday night was a deep low for me. I was physically exhausted after an amazing day with old friends, friends who are in my life if for nothing else than to prove God’s grace. I don’t deserve them. I didn’t see the low coming, when it hit me, and there I was – sobbing. Gasping for air. Alone in my house. It had been a loooong time since I had felt this, the fear, the panic, the inability to be soothed – Dad. Is. Not. Coming. Back. Not for me, not for my brother, not for my husband who I so very much wanted my dad to be there for. Not for my children, not for his friends, not for the Chen boys, and the worst of the worst, not for my mom. She was fifty-two when the plane crashed. If she lives to ninety (my new most fervent prayer request) she will have gone thirty-eight years on memory alone. It’s terrifying and tragic and too sad for me to wrap my brain around at times. Like Saturday night.

Then it passes. Ironically it’s usually my mom that pulls me up out of the pit. And it’s good for the tears to roll, less often now than before, and I know, the crying and the uncontrollable shakes and the desperation, it is good. Because it passes, and it’s out of my system for a while, and somehow some clarity comes with it.

“I can’t do this anymore. I really just can’t. He is not coming back, Mom, and I just…we can’t I don’t see how we can do this.”

“We have to, sweet girl.” She said patiently.

And then, just when I think the hurt might swallow me up, the car starts back up the track. It click, click, clicks up the rollercoaster track, slowly. And we come to a view of daylight savings time, the smell of baseball in the air, and nothing but sweet memories of Dad. And it is okay, for now. It is okay.