Originally written January 19, 2019

There’s a running joke in our family about all of the videos that Shane watches. He is a sucker for a funny, poignant, shocking, or ridiculous social media blast and the rest of us equally enjoy teasing him about it. In fact, we’ve even given his tendencies a nickname: the rabbit hole. As in, Shane’s down the rabbit hole of videos again. (The rabbit hole is generally the “More Videos” stream that shows up after watching a Facebook video. If you’ve seen it, you know we aren’t exaggerating about the title!) We tease my beloved hubby about his videos but all of that teasing has put that term, “the rabbit hole,” in the front of my mind.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about grief, specifically my grief. As a teenager I had a pretty terrible relationship with my dad so losing my mom at such a young age was a double shot of pain: now what? …omg, NOW what?! It was hard but my dad and I got through the hard stuff and established a strong bond that will always be one of the great treasures of my life. What a gift to be given a second chance at such an important relationship. Certainly it was not having it, then having to really work at the relationship that made it so strong.

Losing him is the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. I thought, until that time, that losing Mom was the most terrible thing that could ever happen to me. In fact, I’ve even confirmed my suspicions via the book Motherless Daughters, which asserts that (and this is a complete paraphrase) losing your same-sex parent is the absolute worst. Don’t get me wrong: it is. But losing Dad…that put me in a bad place.

After we lost Mom, my role in the family (which was somewhat self-assigned) became protector. When it comes to Dad and Emily, I am like a piranha, mixed with a mother bear, mixed with…I don’t know but some kind of crazy. Anyone or anything that stands in our way or tries to come between us or tries to take us down goes down instead. I don’t tolerate much of anything. I take responsibility for pain or sadness or frustration in any of us; if anyone is experiencing the pain, sadness, or frustration I mentioned, it’s my fault. I didn’t do my job and hold up my end of the arrangement. I also have extreme radar for anyone with an ulterior motive against one of us. If I see or perceive that someone has an ulterior motive, I shut it right down. You want to know about Dad’s past? Why? There’s no need, especially if he didn’t choose to tell your himself. … How’s he doing? Why? What will you get out of knowing? … Don’t do that – he said no – don’t push him. … Leave my Daddy alone. Maybe that’s crazy but I can’t help it – and frankly I don’t want to.

It’s because of this, however, that I felt responsible for Dad’s death and the circumstances that surrounded it. Logically, I understand that I couldn’t save him from pancreatic cancer, but in my irrational mind, what was more important was that I wasn’t able to protect him from the pain or the sadness or the fear… I wasn’t able to save him from this despair, and that is my struggle, and what kept me in the dark hole.

The rabbit hole.

I noticed something about myself as I was reflecting on my grief and it’s that sometimes, I allow myself to go down the rabbit hole of sadness. Sometimes I need it because that’s where I feel the closest to my dad. Thinking about what went wrong, or words that were said, or pictures that we took on his last good day are DEVASTATING but they’re also where I feel him the strongest because it’s where I left him. It’s where I feel him the strongest. There are days and moments when I need to look at the video that I took of him pretending to play the flute with his nebulizer…the video that, when he watched it back, made him cry… I watch because I need my dad and I need to feel him where I left him. The rabbit hole kept me in a very, very, VERY sad place that got sadder and sadder after Liam was born; some days I couldn’t help being in the rabbit hole but some days I could – and on the days that I could crawl out, I didn’t because there, I could feel my dad and out of the hole, in the sunlight, the reality was that I was parenting without parents. It made for a really hard time for Shane, for our marriage, for my mental health but I didn’t care because I NEEDED my parents and that trumped it all.

But.

Once the clouds lifted and I crawled out into the sunlight, I still needed my dad, but I didn’t need to be in the rabbit hole. I needed to talk about him, I needed to tell people that I missed him, and I needed to tell Liam about Grandpa John, but I didn’t need to torture myself with guilt. Don’t get me wrong: I still have guilt about not being able to save him, but it’s different. It’s sadness but not depression. I still need to let myself go down the rabbit hole from time to time but I no longer need to exist there. I need to watch the video or look at pictures or think about his love for “Eugene” but I also need to think about our stories and our laughs and our trips and our fights and our fun. I need to think about how he and Emily were always the dynamic duo and yet they let me tag along and how much I love them for it. I need to think about how RIGHT ON his advice always was (and how much I miss it!). I need to think about how much he loved having sons-in-law (finally!). I need to think about how Dad and Emily and I were such a strong unit – and how hard we fought to get – and stay – that way. I need to think about how much my parents would have absolutely loved Liam…and not just a grandson, but specifically THIS kid because he’s the most amazing little guy…he is exactly the grandson that they would have just obsessed over. 

And so, we move forward – but grief is a funny thing. Just when you think you’re making progress, you find yourself back in that dark place with lots of tears and sadness. It hits at the expected times and it hits when we least expect it. Eighteen and a half years later and my grief for my mom still hits and takes me to a dark place…but now the darkness is mostly light and my sadness is mostly joy for the time we did have. As I cycle round and round through the rabbit hole, I’ll get there with Dad too. Ultimately, the good news is that pain like this only comes from loving deeply…and so…I’m thankful for the rabbit hole.