It's been 10 months since my dad died unexpectedly on normal Sunday afternoon in August. 10 months of trying to make sense of a new normal. 10 months of happy, sad, exciting, and stressful moments I didn't get to share with him. 10 months of growth and milestones in his grandkids and the other littles in his life that he loved. 10 months of living without him.
I want to share how the idea of this blog came to be. I work at a school and usually once May comes around, I start to think about a summer job. This year, however, it wasn't even on my radar. Literally, until someone would ask me about it, the thought would never cross my mind. I would be okay financially from school and my second job, and I started to wonder if God was telling me it was okay to take this summer and just be still. I have to admit the idea didn't sit easy with me at first, and even today, I still wrestle with it some. As much as I loved my dad, the part of his life that was hardest for me to deal with was how much he worked. He worked ALL the time. In summers past, I would have to convince him to schedule weekends with no work so we could do other things. From what I understand, he started working a job as soon as he was able as a teen and never slowed down. His work ethic was definitely admirable, don't get me wrong. Growing up, I never had to worry that my dad couldn't provide for what we needed and even as an adult, he was always happy to help me and my brothers financially when he was able and I know that came from working so many hours. That being said, his mindset has always been that if someone can work, they should, and he made that known to me from the time I was a kid. So, the idea of not working this summer doesn't always sit well with me but I just remind myself that he really would be okay with it if he knew the reasoning behind it.
So, as I'm trying to discern if God really was telling me to just be still this summer, I went to a therapy session, having no idea of what we would talk about. My therapist usually started our sessions with an idea of an exercise or activity we could try and if I was okay with it, we would go from there. That day, he talked about something called The Dual Process Model of Grief, which I had never heard of. Basically, it's two coping strategies of coping with grief. One is Loss Oriented and the other is Restoration. Loss Oriented is dealing with the grief itself while Restoration is engaging in things that distract us from grief or contribute to rebuilding our lives. It is natural to go between these two strategies, but it's also possible to get stuck in one.
My therapist helped me to see that I've been stuck in Restoration. The first words out of my mouth when the doctor told me my dad had died were, "What's next?" From then on, I was in 'doing' mode - making lists of who to call, questions to ask various peoples, and working my way down the list of things I knew needed to be done. As a 'doer,' this all just seemed the right thing to do. School also started the next week and while it was a glorious, wonderful distraction, it was still a distraction that kept me from focusing too much on my grief. While I have had moments of sadness and tears, they have been fleeting and somewhat 'shallow' if that makes sense.
After having just told my therapist I thought God might be telling me to take it easy this summer, and talking about these aspects of grief, he suggested that God may be giving me the summer to focus on the Loss Oriented side of grief and truly mourn, and accept, the death of my dad. Sometimes I doubt what I think God may be saying to me and it's always a relief to have another person looking in on the situation see the same thing and validate my thoughts.
So I decided to start a blog. A grief blog. I honestly have no idea how often I'll write or what I'll write about or even how this whole journey will go. As someone who likes to have a 'road map' of how things are supposed to go, not having any kind of schedule or agenda is completely out of my comfort zone. I bought a Bible study and have some other ideas in mind so I'll just see how it all goes. Join me, if you will and if you want, for this journey of Missing Boomer.
