For years now, my world has revolved around my dad. Ever since he was diagnosed in August of 2022 with stage 4 cancer, everything has been about him. I don’t say that in a malicious way, it was just a fact that my dad came first and the rest of the world was second. While I was away at college the following year, I was coming back home to see him and my mom as much as I could— sitting with him while he went through chemo, driving him to get blood work, long days and nights at the Mayo clinic waiting to see surgeons and specialists and all kinds of other fancy doctors who promised they would be able to help. I was on-call, prepared to drop everything if I received one text or call from my mom. I was even ready to cancel my wedding if he couldn’t be there.
For a year and a half of my life, my dad was the sun, he was everything. And I was a little planet spinning in his orbit, always looking to him to see if it would be a good day or not. Planets orbit around the sun because of the sun’s strong, gravitational pull. Even if the planets want to follow another path, they can’t because the sun is center of the universe and has the strongest pull. The sicker and sicker my dad became, the stronger his pull became. The more necessary it was for me to fall in line, to do what a cancer patient’s daughter needed to do, to be there for not only the good and bad, but the ugly and traumatic as well. As time was ticking away for my dad, it was ticking away for the center of my world. I don’t regret making my dad the center of my world, and I don’t regret the many precious memories I made with him during that last year and a half, but looking back, I don’t think another human is ever meant to be everything. Because when another human is your whole world—your sun—what happens when they inevitably die?
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The six month anniversary of my dad’s death fell in the middle of a girls trip I took with my mom. We went to South Padre Island for a few days and then to Waco, Texas, to see and shop everything Magnolia-related. While I’m sure we were both aware what the 29th meant, neither of us talked about it, like saying it out loud would make it more real.
This trip with my mom was amazing and much-needed for both of us. I had just graduated college and started my full-time job with Better Homes & Gardens. My mom had just turned in her letter of resignation and had closed on a house closer to my brother and me. A trip away was exactly what we both needed, and I will always cherish the memories we shared together during those 8 days in Texas (so many checks of the bucket list, delicious food, pinch-me-moments, and laughs). But even on a girls vacation many states away from home, six months after he passed away, my dad was still there, or more so, his absence was there, showing up in the smallest and most profound moments.
He was the first person I wanted to call when our flight had to make an emergency landing (that is a whole other story in itself). He was the last person I would think of at night and the first person my heart would long for the next day. He was in the way my mom would stop walking and look out over the ocean. He was in the waves and the sand on our feet and us saying, “I just can’t believe we’re here.” My dad’s absence, the loss of his entire being, was more tangible on that trip than it has been since the day he died. Even though he’s not here, and my life doesn’t revolve around cancer and being a dying-person’s daughter anymore, he is still in everything. It like my mind and body are still trained to turn toward him, orbit around their sun because it’s all they’ve known to do.
But my dad isn’t here anymore (on earth anyway)and my life does not need to orbit around him or the absence of him forever, but it’s all I’ve known how to do. I guess that’s active grieving—figuring out life without someone who was everything, and learning to be okay with their absence, awaiting the day you’ll see them again in glory. Because just like how humans long for morning after an exhausting, sleepless night, I still long for my dad, and I know I always will.
