Coping with grief: Navigating life after losing a parent

What words can I use to describe the loss of a parent? I still struggle to this day to put it in words.

If someone told me I would lose my father as we began the new year, I would have never believed them because there is nothing that can prepare you for how to act, or even how to feel. This goes to show one can never be sure of what life has in store for us.

The past five months have not been without their struggles.

It has been a test of faith, a lot of forgiveness and gaining the ability to survive without what had become the norm, which is having both my parents at home.

We just returned from a trip in the Eastern Cape and it had been a few months back since this massive yard was buzzing with family members paying their respects as we laid my father to rest.

Coming back to our homestead where he spoke so much about his post-retirement plans, building his family home, maybe get into farming – oh, how he was looking forward to it.

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The purpose of the trip was to declutter and share his clothes – usually three or six months after the passing of a loved on.

Among the crowd, my mother was sitting in one corner on her grass mat, with her navy blue attire sticking out like a thorn… she wore this on the morning of the funeral, symbolic of her loss of her husband and a sign of respect.

I quietly wept at the back before I eventually stood before the pile of clothes on the floor and grabbed his favourite shoes – a pair of grey Crocs he wore on the morning to the hospital.

I was reminded of a quote about grief not being linear.

That it will come at you quickly or sometimes it will just hang around in the background of your life.

It will allow you moments of happiness and then meet you at night.

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One of my friends who lost her mother compared her loss to losing her grounding point – and over the past months, I can say she is right.

One day, on my way back home, I was shedding tears the entire journey. I was overwhelmed with emotions but when I got home, I had to try to hide my emotions because I don’t want to burden anyone with my grief.

And sometimes it’s like a distant memory your brain has blocked out – until the next trigger.

Memories come flooding back, each one a bittersweet reminder…

Navigating a major loss while the world equally expects you to show up, to be okay, that life has to go on while you are stuck in a ball of emotions, has been the difficult part.

And while I am able to accept and rationalise death faster than others, this one death has taken a bit of me.

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Sometimes I wish I could go back in time.

I would go back to the Friday before this all happened and revise the days leading up to it, try something different, act a lot quicker.

Maybe that would have saved him.

Then I can get out of this weird alternate reality I’ve been living in.

I feel like I’m living in two worlds right now. In one world, I’m carrying on and trying to cope and adjust to the new life. In the other, my father is still alive and everything is great.

How do we move on from feeling stuck in two worlds?

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One thing I know is that you shouldn’t ignore your grief. You shouldn’t wallow, but you shouldn’t push feelings of grief to the back of your mind.

While I struggle everyday with it, I realise that processing grief is not like a hurdle that you jump and leave behind – and it’s not a lesson you learn once: it’s a continuous experience that’s constantly changing.

And every day I am learning to live in it.

To embrace it and be kinder to myself.