Grief never ends. But it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It’s the price of love.

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Outside looking in, today appears to be just another regular workday for me. I got myself around, brushed my teeth and got dressed this morning as the coffee brewed downstairs. I booted up my laptop and saw a handful of new email and responded to the easy ones right away. Rain is falling outside my window this morning, which seems to suit my mood.

Ripping off the August 1 page of my trivia calendar, I read today’s question and quietly laugh to myself at the (dare I say it) triviality of the question on a day like this.

Today is the worst day of my life.

Not Wednesday, August 2, 2023, but rather Sunday, August 2, 1981.

Some days in your life are indelibly imprinted in your mind. It’s as if they could have happened last weekend rather than a Sunday morning 42 years ago. Being a teenager at the time, it was always on my mind, every day for years. Although the saying goes “time heals all wounds”, in this case I think it just dulls them to a scar that aches on rainy days and in those moments when you look at it and reflect.

The thing that frustrates me most about my father’s death at 51 years old is that he could have possibly prevented it. The massive heart attack that killed him that Sunday morning in 1981 was precipitated by a milder heart attack on Tuesday earlier that week.

If alternate universes are truly a thing, I hope there’s a version of the events where my dad thought something wasn’t right on that Tuesday, saw a cardiologist and they rushed him into a successful surgery that resulted in the myocardial infarction that killed him never occurring five days later.

I wonder what that version of my life looks like today. Even with the change of events, I think I’m likely married to the same wonderful person I am in the here and now and have the same awesome family as I have in this iteration of my life. Perhaps my career is different than what it changed to due to my dad’s death and my original impending college destination. Perhaps we live in a different state. Either way, I hope I’m happy.

Realizing that my father would be closing in on 94 years old had he survived the heart attack, it’s statistically likely he would have passed away before now, so the grief would be newer and more intense, but the fact that he would have lived a full and rich life would have made the loss perhaps more bearable for those he left behind.

Although today IS the anniversary of one of the worst days of my life, I also recognize that I was fortunate to have my dad in my life for 17 years and that there are people who either had no fatherly influence at all and those who lost their dads due to death, divorce, or simply not being engaged in the role with their children.

I feel gratitude for the 17 years I had my father in my life. Thank you for allowing me to indulge in another post dealing with his death. It’s almost therapy to me…truly it is.

By the way, the answer to the trivia question above? Gladys Knight & the Pips with a song called “The Friendship Train”.

Be blessed and have a great day!