GOOD GRIEF

Fall has arrived, and with it, an elegiac undercurrent in my psyche. It’s been 45 years since my father succumbed to esophogeal cancer, but I can still feel the sense of loss in this season, and especially now that I am ten years older than my father was when he died.

He had been diagnosed back in February of 1965, but by summer’s end the doctors had given him the death warrant. Even though I knew he was soon to die, my excitement over leaving home and going off to college kept the reality at bay.

In truth, that reality didn’t hit me until four years later, when I was graduating and my high school/college boyfriend dumped me. I had evaded and avoided and denied my grief as long as possible.

I had tried to blame my mother for demanding too much of him. I had tried to blame my father for being too quiet, for not expressing his anger enough and making himself sick. I had blamed myself for not asking him more questions about his life and for being so unconscious of just how really ill he was.

Over the years I have forgiven all of us. But the grief returns with the chill in the air, and I let myself bathe in its meaning — that life is change and loss is not a punishment but a deepening of my soul.