“I wasn’t always as emotionally intelligent as I am today. For example, when my father died, I was flummoxed by all the different ways people expressed grief. My mother threw herself into religion. My Meemaw turned into a different kind of spirit. My brother tried to fill the vacuum left by my fathers passing. And then there is all the friends and neighbors who experienced their grief with food…”
After the death of his father, Sheldon thought of star trek and how disappointed he was by the death of Mr. Spock. He thought of the many things he would have said to him as he left that morning. “Dad wait, I am and shall always be your friend… Dad wait, bye… Dad wait, I love you… Dad wait, can I go with you? But he said none of it.
Missy on the other hand expressed grief by lashing out. She lashed out at Sheldon when he said he was thinking of star trek. She shouted at Georgie their elder brother that he wasn’t dad. She locked herself into her room. Her neighbor and schoolmate Billy tried taking advantage of this, asking her whether she wanted to hug or kiss but Missy just said… “Eeeew”. She also didn’t want anyone sitting at her father’s seat at the sitting room.
I have to admit, this is one of the few episodes of any show that raised so much emotional turmoil in me. I didn’t want to cry but I ended up shading tears. I didn’t want to think of my situation but I couldn’t help subconsciously go back four years ago. Unlike missy or Sheldon or all the other characters in the show, my expression of grieving was different.
You see, when you lose a family member or a beloved, your world shatters. You feel empty. You feel the void they have left. It starts with denial. Then anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. At times, it feels like you are mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invincible blanket between the world and you. You find it hard to take in what anyone says. You feel like a spiral, not sure whether you are going up or down.
Friends and others come to your home. They tell you how good the deceased was to them. What a huge gap they have left behind. How lucky you have been to have had such a person in your life and how sorry they are for your loss. It's true, some mean it. It's also true that some never knew the deceased and just say it for the drill.
During the burial, you get to hear all the lovely praise speeches they have. People break down, some sincerely meaning it with others wondering when will rice be served. People say that tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness but a sign of pure heart. However, is this always true? You might try avoiding grief as a better way of dealing it, but you’ll still meet people and they will tell you how sorry they are for your loss.
And then it is your time to give a speech. Or a farewell. To honor the memory of the deceased, they say. What first comes to your mind is the loss. Then the memories, and now the fear of a future without them. When you pick up the microphone, you narrate your favorite memory of them. Something they did and it either made you happy or laugh.
“I have been thinking about the last moments I had with my dad. It was morning and he was leaving for work. He said see you all later, and I said nothing. I regret that. I could have said bye, or ask him for a ride, or tell him that I loved him. But I didn’t. I barely noticed that he left. So many times that I didn’t notice my father. I hope he knew how much I loved him…” This is what Sheldon wanted to say but he didn’t. and in so many ways, I find myself similar to him.
But then, how about when none of all the above happens? You lose someone and you don’t grieve, you don’t get to hear what people say about them or don’t even attend the funeral? When I first heard that my dad was no more, it was barely roomers. Then became real within the day. I didn’t know what to feel. I hadn’t seen him in over two years. I had barely talked to him in the last six years. If I’m being honest, I didn’t know what kind of a man he was.
That’s pretty cold for a son, I know you are cursing. But specifics and specifics and specifics. The only happy memory I had of him was when he brought me a jeans for Christmas. However, it was oversized and had to wait three years before it could fit me. Other than that, nothing else remarkable. Not that he wasn’t present, which by the way he barely was, but that I didn’t want to be associated with him in one way or the other.
I neither attended the funeral nor ever went back to see his final resting place. I never got to know who presided over the farewell ceremony, who said what and what in the speeches or how his eulogy was. I never got to know whether I was mentioned as his only son who didn’t attend the funeral despite being around or they gave an excuse as to why I wasn’t there, or that they didn’t mention me at all. I never got to know what everyone else thought of me since then.
In my defense, to this day, most of my friends never knew and still don’t know who my dad was, including my closest friend for eight years, sham. Back then, I didn’t feel anything. But now, it haunts me. I wish I could just move on you know. Mourn and cry and just be done with it, or at least seem to be. But… I don’t know. I don’t want to fix it. I it's not something that is broken. It's just…something that happened.
There is so much I want to write, but words just elude me. Time and again, tears well up in my eyes and emotions weigh down my heavy heart. I wonder whether I would have been a different man had I been close to him a then, or whether I worked myself on his shortcomings and became a better man.
Like Sheldon, for a long time I focused on my fathers’ shortcomings (which were all that I could remember) but now that I’m slowly adulting, I wonder whether maybe he was just a person doing the best that he could.