Dear Dad,
People
tell me I’ve coped very well with your loss. I haven’t, I don’t have a clue
what I’m doing and often, it shows. I wish I could talk to you about it. I’ve
been struggling a lot as the black anniversary of your death approaches - it’s
like someone removed several layers of skin and took a piece of me with them -
but I’ve made it to today, however tough it’s been at times. I’ve learned some
lessons.
Grief
is sneaky and has the patient stealth of a sniper. Repeatedly throughout the
year, I’ve been sucker-punched by a sudden memory or a lack I can’t even name.
A better writer than me could describe those feelings, I can’t think of a way
to capture it all – sadness that you’re gone, fury that you’re never coming
back, happiness that you’re still so vivid in my memories, confusion that it
should be coming back at unexpected times, fear that maybe one day it won’t
come back… It doesn’t matter what you do, grief will hit the bullseye every
time. I know you told me you wanted people to remember you and laugh or dance,
but Dad, that’s been the hardest thing you’ve ever asked of me.
In
my attempts to cope, I spent some time casting around for the right way to
behave, to protect myself maybe – Perhaps this is the springboard to a new
career? A new look? Should I have a boyfriend? Shouldn’t I be thinking about
turning 40 this year? – and all of my ideas were based on what I thought good,
productive, valuable people should be
doing. I know you’d tell me to be myself, but you know it’s not that simple. It
takes balls of steel to walk the path of my heart, and more than I have not to
be at least tempted by an easier journey. The problem is, I’m an awkward piece
of furniture. The more I tried to become who I wasn’t, the more lost I felt. As
the two people – the ideal Zoe I thought the world wanted, and the real Zoe
that I felt no one wanted – stretched apart inside me, writing fell down the
cracks and I was too exhausted to fight for it.
You
always encouraged me to follow my own weird little star, and even though I was
bullied at school for it, I was a happy kid. I was entirely myself before the
world got in the way. Then the world turned and you died. My dreams don’t fit
with what the world expects; at every turn I’m met with dismissal or worse,
pity, and it gets harder every day to stick to my guns. Those acceptable paths
are hard even if they’re what you want, but if they’re not part of who you are,
they are pretty much impossible; I had that lesson beaten into me this year.
You always said I insisted on learning things the hard way.
I’ve
been on a downward spiral and I’ve not had the heart to write in a while but
recently I had a realisation that allows me to reach up again and start writing.
I saw the Foo Fighters live and there I was, standing amongst 80,000 people all
singing and dancing to this band who were putting heart and soul into the music
and I thought, I am home. I don’t
think I have felt that way in a long time. I remembered how much I love live
music; visceral rock bands who are loud and large, who give their all and leave
everything on the stage. There’s a writing lesson for me right there – I should
scream onto each page like my life depended on it. In a way, it does. Also, I
am a terrible dancer, I can barely hold a tune and yet there I was, dancing and
singing amidst all those people who did not care about those things, who would
have had a great time whatever I did. I get it, Dad. The world is that stadium:
no one cares if you are true to yourself - except you.
As
for what this means about how I am “coping” and what I think one year on, I
think this: fuck what society says I am supposed to be or what grief should
look like. Fuck all those boxes people try to put you in – daughter, sister,
aunt, friend, spinster. I can be a rock music-loving book nerd, a careful poet
who likes abrasive, freewheeling comedy, an Arts graduate who likes a good
Jason Statham movie, a feminist with a George Clooney calendar above my bed if
I want to be. If that means I’m too “difficult” to find a partner in life
because I don’t have the looks or style to balance out the quirks, it makes me
sad but fuck that too. Fuck acting in an age-appropriate manner. Fuck being
apologetic and always trying to make the peace. Fuck the assumptions and
expectations of other people, even those who love you. Fuck thinking you can’t
write “fuck” so many times in a letter to your dead Dad. Fuck coping with all of
this with dignity. Fuck dignity, when it comes down to it. Life really is too
short to worry about that. I will dance badly and sing at the top of my lungs
if I want to, I will live my life entirely as I am and I will write and write
and leave it all on the page.
The
sad thing is, I think I was on my way to understanding all of this when you left
us all and I clutched at anything I could in desperation. This world of people
who tried to get me to be something I wasn’t was all in my head. Meanwhile, there
have been too many good people caught in the crossfire of my struggling - people
I let down with my absence or lashed out at in my frustration - and for that I
am wholeheartedly sorry. I know you’d tell me there was nothing to forgive, but
I don’t believe living unapologetically gives you license to trample over
anyone else. I was doing my best, which is all you ever really asked of me, but
the last few weeks I am not sure my best has been good enough. I will be
better.
I
shed a few tears that night at the Foos, thinking about how much you would have
loved the show, how you would have been dancing alongside me, equally badly (I
mean, come on Pops, no amount of rose-tint can erase that fact). What I’ve
learned about mourning during this year is that you were right (don’t make me
say it twice) to ask people to laugh or dance when they thought of you. I
understand that you don’t honour the people you’ve lost by focussing on their
absence. As long as I keep alive the part of me that is free enough to feel my
heart soar at live music and dance like an utter goon, you will always be with
me. Similarly, as long as I live and write honestly, I will never be entirely lost
or alone. I can make a kind of peace with that.
Today
marks the end of a year of loss and rediscovery. It marks the start of a new
phase where there are no more first milestones to dread, no other way to turn
than where my heart takes me. I’ll never forget you, Dad - how can I when you
helped to make me the oddball I am? – but I think I have to stop measuring time
in how long it’s been since you died, just as I have to stop measuring myself
against standards that don’t apply to me. You always said that all you ever
wanted for me was to be happy – I could say I wish you’d warned me how hard
that could be, but we both know I wouldn’t have listened. You gave me enough of
a foundation to figure it out for myself; I think you understood it had to be that
way. So OK, lesson learned, Pops. From one misfit to another and in the words
of the mighty Dave Grohl – I was always caged and now I’m free.
Love, Zoe
P.S. For the rest of my
life, every time I hear ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man, I’ll think of you. You won
that one, you daft bugger.
