Dear readers,
It is with a certain degree of agony that I am writing this post. If you have experienced the death of a parent, then perhaps you can relate to my anguish…
If you have not yet experienced the death of a parent, I want to warn you! But what can I say to prepare you? All I can do is share my story and hope that it may be helpful to some people who read it…
My Dad died four months ago today, and it is truly the worst thing that has ever happened to me. At fifty years old, I thought I had experienced a lot of grief already in my life, but now I see that the griefs over unions-with-earthguys-gone-bad and the griefs over my health and financial issues were nothing compared with the grief over losing my Dad…
The pain is just terrible! But, in the days following his death, I received an overwhelming amount of comments and private messages from friends on Facebook, and that helped me so much. I printed out all of those helpful words, and I read them again and again as I sobbed. One friend, who had lost her father the year before, wrote, “There is nothing like it; It is cellular.” I could so relate, because I felt the pain in all of my cells, fibers, and bones!
Another friend, who also lost her father, shared that she didn’t realize how unbelievable the territory was. She wrote, “We can’t know until we arrive at it, that’s for sure.”
I cried so much during the first couple of months, while I continued doing all of my spiritual practices each day. Gradually I gained more inner strength and stopped crying so much, but still, every evening when it gets dark my “witching hour” begins and the questions and answers replay in my mind as they have hundreds of times before… The journey through disbelief, trauma, and shock is rocky, but hopefully I’m steadily working my way towards acceptance, healing, and peace…
One friend said that we don’t ever really get over the grief when a parent dies, but rather, it just becomes a familiar part of us… That idea brings me a strange comfort.
Fortunately I am by nature a grateful person, and I have a strong base of happiness in me… So, even during these terribly painful months, I have been able to create happy moments each day.
When the time comes for you to experience the death of a parent, I hope you will also be able to access the inner resources you need in order to love yourself through the pain.
With grief and gratitude in equal portions,
StarFire Teja
