Have Fun Storming the Castle

The golden box was maybe a foot on each side. Definitely smaller than a breadbox. Way too small to contain my dad.

In the funeral home, among talk of keepsake fingerprint jewelry and obituaries, we picked out this simple square urn. Mostly, I think we wanted to get it over with. But also, it looked sort of futuristic. Sort of Borg-ish. That seems fitting, especially to me, the token agnostic. All the talk of God and the afterlife left me flat.

There was no way this box could contain my dad’s big thoughts, and certainly not his ego. It felt like all of what made him him had been deflated. Without any specific belief in souls, this is what I am left with.

Assimilation into the collective of what came before and what comes after. That’s something I can get behind. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Except, of course, this box and the vault that would encase it were built to prevent that mingling to body and earth. Thankfully, my mom, sister, and I all have a small bag of ashes to do with what we will. If I was filthy rich, I would send a tiny pinch into space. I will have to think of something else fitting for this doled-out bit of my father.

The funeral was wonderful, too-small borg-box not withstanding. Quite a few people stood up to talk about my dad. There was so much humor. My sister’s eulogy was the most touching, to me, since we had shared many of the same experiences.

She told of her deathbed confession. The bike she had begged him for never existed. She used the money to buy clothes.

How he would say you should always wear a tie on the first day of classes so the teacher knows you’re serious.

All our lives (well, at least since The Princess Bride came out) my dad bid us farewell with, “Have fun storming the castle.” So those were her last words to him before she sat back down.

via GIPHY

The priest did a fantastic job of capturing my dad. He started with a joke about picking his vestments carefully, hearing my father’s voice admonishing him, “No, not that. That’s not Catholic enough!”

He ended by reading a passage from my dad’s book, and added, “and have fun… storming the castle.”

Lorelei had held up “well” during the previous days. Though, I cringe at attributing success or failure in grief. Either way, she finally broke down during the funeral.

As I kept a firm hand on her shaking back, I thought of all the times my dad had done the same for me. I wished he had been there to put his arm around my shoulder at that moment. The idea that Rowan will have no memories of my dad, and that Lorelei’s will be fuzzy at best is one of the most difficult parts of this.

Back at my parents’ house, I held to an erratic pattern of naps and baths. I was not prepared for the pure exhaustion that comes with grief. I drank beer and ate my weight in chocolate chip cookies. At night, after the visitors had left, the alcohol had dissipated, and the feelings threatened to swallow me, I took some Ativan and slept. I emailed my psychiatrist to get a refill, which she kindly called in before adding, “I’m no longer in network with Cigna.” Great.

The next day, we headed back to Durham. The world doesn’t stop for death anymore than Emily Dickinson did. Through a mixture of bereavement leave and vacation time, I have managed to slow the reentry into the real world. This employer-sanctioned period of bereavement and space for grief has felt a whole hell of a lot like… parenting. Lorelei was on spring break all last week and I still had a birthday party to plan.

Every year we have had perfect weather for this party. This, of course, would be the first year that the weather sucked and kept us indoors. It felt like a personal middle finger from the universe. A lot of things feel like that, these days. I almost had a meltdown when I couldn’t find tiny bananas anywhere, because they were the linchpin of my best idea… to let a bunch of kids throw real bananas at a wooden Minion in my house.

Eventually, I found the tiny bananas and kept my arms and feet mostly inside the ride through the chaos of a party in our relatively small house.

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During all this party planning time, I have felt numb about my dad’s death. Since I didn’t see him everyday, it was easy to sort of fail to emotionally acknowledge that anything was out of the ordinary. Like so many things, I knew it intellectually, but couldn’t grasp the big picture of it.

After the first weeks following Rowan’s traumatic birth, I lost my ability to cry for at least two years. It isn’t as fun as it sounds. All that pent up emotion came out as panic and depression, instead.I’m scared of that happening again. I still have moments where it hits me that he is gone, but my brain is determined to protect me from the overwhelming grief of the last week. That level of kinetic sadness is not survivable long term.

So now I’m in this weird place where I hate feeling numb, but my brain revolts against even the tiniest hints of big feelings. It hasn’t found a balance yet. Letting any feelings in could open the floodgates and drown me.

A few times I’ve felt like something must be wrong with me, that I am somehow already “over it.”

Then I realize the other ways it’s still present. My short temper, inability to take small disappointments in stride, and my severe, bone crushing exhaustion. This is different than tired. It’s deeper and more hopeless. It feels like even if I slept for a month I would need more. It is not just emotional escapism, though. It’s a true physical emptiness.

I feel like a puppet, being led through these days and the chores and the parenting. It is all routine. Inside, I just want everyone to leave me alone and let me sleep.

Grief-stricken posts always focus on the good now missing from the world. I don’t mean to downplay some of my dad’s shortcomings, his inability to find empathy unless he deemed something to be a big enough deal. Invalidation. Minimization. The way he dealt with emotions could be harmfully dismissive. But if he felt like you really needed him, he would be there. Or at least give you advice on how to pay someone else to be there. He was the first person I called when I needed to make big decisions.

This weekend, I walked into my house and glanced at the Hydrangeas I brought back from the funeral. My first thought was, “I’ll ask my dad about planting these.” Oh.

I think life is going to be a series of difficult “firsts” for a while. The first birthdays without him, the first father’s day, the first times I think to email him a question and can’t, or the next “big” publication without his praise.

Today, I had to go back to work. This post was written last night, and contained a lot of overwhelm regarding the amount of work on my desk waiting for me. Then I got here, and everyone is like, “oh, we’ve taken care of that for you.” So now I have a normal amount of work, and none that involves talking to people.

I am forever amazed at the capacity of my friends and coworkers to carry as much of the load as they can. And when they can’t, they order food deliveries and offer to hang out with Lorelei, and collect money for a spa day. They have dropped chocolate off at work for me, arranged an Easter egg hunt in New Bern for my kids, and just generally been there.

I know that this will not last. It cannot last forever.

From the outside, grieving will slowly morph to be the start of the rest of my life.

And yet, my dad will still be dead.

Somehow, this has to become the new normal, as unfair as that feels and will continue to feel. Forever.