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A Father's Legacy: Reflecting on the Narrative of Losing My Dad

Table of contents, introduction, a guiding light and endless love, the unfathomable farewell, navigating the rapids of grief, a continuation of love.

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Dear Therapist Writes to Herself in Her Grief

My father died, there’s a pandemic, and I’m overcome by my feeling of loss.

Dear Therapist,

I know that everyone is going through loss during the coronavirus pandemic, but in the midst of all this, my beloved father died two weeks ago, and I’m reeling.

He was 85 years old and in great pain from complications due to congestive heart failure. After years of invasive procedures and frequent hospitalizations, he decided to go into home hospice to live out the rest of his life surrounded by family. We didn’t know whether it would be weeks or months, but we expected his death, and had prepared for it in the time leading up to it. We had the conversations we wanted to have, and the day he died, I was there to kiss his cheeks and massage his forehead, to hold his hand and say goodbye. I was at his bedside when he took his last breath.

And yet, nothing prepared me for this loss. Can you help me understand my grief?

Lori Los Angeles, Calif.

Dear Readers,

This week, I decided to submit my own “Dear Therapist” letter following my father’s death. As a therapist, I’m no stranger to grief, and I’ve written about its varied manifestations in this column many times .

Even so, I wanted to write about the grief I’m now experiencing personally, because I know this is something that affects everyone. You can’t get through life without experiencing loss. The question is, how do we live with loss?

In the months before my father died, I asked him a version of that question: How will I live without you? If this sounds strange—asking a person you love to give you tips on how to grieve his death—let me offer some context.

My dad was a phenomenal father, grandfather, husband, and loyal friend to many. He had a dry sense of humor, a hearty laugh, boundless compassion, an uncanny ability to fix anything around the house, and a deep knowledge of the world (he was my Siri before there was a Siri). Mostly, though, he was known for his emotional generosity. He cared deeply about others; when we returned to my mom’s house after his burial, we were greeted by a gigantic box of paper towels on her doorstep, ordered by my father the day before he died so that she wouldn’t have to worry about going out during the pandemic.

His greatest act of emotional generosity, though, was talking me through my grief. He said many comforting things in recent months—how I’ll carry him inside me, how my memories of him will live forever, how he believes in my resilience. A few years earlier, he had taken me aside after one of my son’s basketball games and said that he’d just been to a friend’s funeral, told the friend’s adult daughter how proud her father had been of her, and was heartbroken when she said her father had never said that to her.

“So,” my father said outside the gym, “I want to make sure that I’ve told you how proud of you I am. I want to make sure you know.” It was the first time we’d had a conversation like that, and the subtext was clear: I’m going to die sooner rather than later. We stood there, the two of us, hugging and crying as people passing by tried not to stare, because we both knew that this was the beginning of my father’s goodbye.

But of all the ways my father tried to prepare me for his loss, what has stayed with me most was when he talked about what he learned from grieving his own parents’ deaths: that grief was unavoidable, and that I would grieve this loss forever.

“I can’t make this less painful for you,” he said one night when I started crying over the idea—still so theoretical to me—of his death. “But when you feel the pain, remember that it comes from a place of having loved and been loved deeply.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Beyond that—you’re the therapist. Think about how you’ve helped other people with their grief.”

So I have. Five days before he died, I developed a cough that would wake me from sleep. I didn’t have the other symptoms of COVID-19—fever, fatigue—but still, I thought: I’d better not go near Dad . I spoke with him every day, as usual, except for Saturday, when time got away from me. I called the next day—the day when suddenly he could barely talk and all we could say was “I love you” to each other before he lost consciousness. He never said another word; our family sat vigil until he died the next afternoon.

Afterward, I was racked with guilt. While I’d told myself that I hadn’t seen him in his last days because of my cough, and that I hadn’t called Saturday because of the upheaval of getting supplies for the lockdown, maybe I wasn’t there and didn’t call because I was in denial—I couldn’t tolerate the idea of him dying, so I found a way to avoid confronting it.

Soon this became all I thought about—how I wished I’d gone over with my cough and a mask; how I wished I’d called on Saturday when he was still cogent—until I remembered something I wrote in this column to a woman who felt guilty about the way she had treated her dying husband in his last week. “One way to deal with intense grief is to focus the pain elsewhere,” I had written then. “It might be easier to distract yourself from the pain of missing your husband by turning the pain inward and beating yourself up over what you did or didn’t do for him.”

Like my father, her husband had suffered for a long time, and like her, I felt I had failed him in his final days.

I wrote to her:

Grief doesn’t begin the day a person dies. We experience the loss while the person is alive, and because our energy is focused on doctor appointments and tests and treatments—and because the person is still here—we might not be aware that we’ve already begun grieving the loss of someone we love … So what happens to their feelings of helplessness, sadness, fear, or rage? It’s not uncommon for people with a terminally ill partner to push their partner away in order to protect themselves from the pain of the loss they’re already experiencing and the bigger one they’re about to endure. They might pick fights with their partner … They might avoid their partner, and busy themselves with other interests or people. They might not be as helpful as they had imagined they would be, not only because of the exhaustion that sets in during these situations, but also because of the resentment: How dare you show me so much love, even in your suffering, and then leave me .

Another “Dear Therapist” letter came to mind this week, this one from a man grieving the loss of his wife of 47 years . He wanted to know how long this would go on. I replied:

Many people don’t know that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s well-known stages of grieving—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—were conceived in the context of terminally ill patients coming to terms with their own deaths … It’s one thing to “accept” the end of your own life. But for those who keep on living, the idea that they should reach “acceptance” might make them feel worse (“I should be past this by now”; “I don’t know why I still cry at random times, all these years later”) … The grief psychologist William Worden looks at grieving in this light, replacing “stages” with “tasks” of mourning. In the fourth of his tasks, the goal is to integrate the loss into our lives and create an ongoing connection with the person who died—while also finding a way to continue living.

Just like my father suggested, these columns helped. And so did my own therapist, the person I called Wendell in my recent book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone . He sat with me (from a coronavirus-safe distance, of course) as I tried to minimize my grief— look at all of these relatively young people dying from the coronavirus when my father got to live to 85 ; look at the all the people who weren’t lucky enough to have a father like mine —and he reminded me that I always tell others that there’s no hierarchy of pain, that pain is pain and not a contest.

And so I stopped apologizing for my pain and shared it with Wendell. I told him how, after my father died and we were waiting for his body to be taken to the mortuary, I kissed my father’s cheek, knowing that it would be the last time I would ever kiss him, and I noticed how soft and warm his cheek still was, and I tried to remember what he felt like, because I knew I would never feel my father’s skin again. I told Wendell how I stared at my father’s face and tried to memorize every detail, knowing it would be the last time I’d ever see the face I’d looked at my entire life. I told him how gutted I was by the physical markers that jolted me out of denial and made this goodbye so horribly real—seeing my father’s lifeless body being wrapped in a sheet and placed in a van ( Wait, where are you taking my dad? I silently screamed), carrying the casket to the hearse, shoveling dirt into his grave, watching the shiva candle melt for seven days until the flame was jarringly gone. Mostly, though, I cried, deep and guttural, the way my patients do when they’re in the throes of grief.

Since leaving Wendell’s office, I have cried and also laughed. I’ve felt pain and joy; I’ve felt numb and alive. I’ve lost track of the days, and found purpose in helping people through our global pandemic. I’ve hugged my son, also reeling from the loss of his grandfather, tighter than usual, and let him share his pain with me. I’ve spent some days FaceTiming with friends and family, and other days choosing not to engage.

But the thing that has helped me the most is what my father did for me and also what Wendell did for me. They couldn’t take away my pain, but they sat with me in my loss in a way that said: I see you, I hear you, I’m with you. This is exactly what we need in grief, and what we can do for one another—now more than ever.

Related Podcast

Listen to Lori Gottlieb share her advice on dealing with grief and answer listener questions on Social Distance , The Atlantic ’s new podcast about living through a pandemic:

Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental-health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it—in part or in full—and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

The Day My Father Died

Being with my father when he died taught me more about life than death..

Posted November 9, 2013

November 11, 1998 dawned grey and cold. I had been staying with my brother and mother in Ellwood City, Pa. off and on for six weeks since my father had been diagnosed with acute leukemia. The doctor had given him six to eight weeks to live. It had been a long twenty-two years since my father had had a heart attack, years littered with health problems, years of caregiving for my mother. My father was eighty years old and proud of it. His brothers had all died before him, mostly of heart disease, one at the age of thirty-six. The day before he died was my parents’ fifty-sixth wedding anniversary, something that he was unaware of. We crossed our fingers that day, hoping he would live through it.

A few days before his death, my mother and I received a call in the middle of the night from my father’s nurse. She said he was restless and afraid and that we should come to the hospital. When we arrived, he was not afraid at all. In fact, he was smiling and more alert than he had been in many days. My mother and I stood by the bed talking with him. He joked that a beer would taste good about now. At one point he asked my mother to kiss him, which she did. Then he asked me to say a prayer, so the three of us held hands while I prayed.

That was his last lucid moment. He was unconscious most of the time after that.

I knew he was dying, but I did not recognize this as his goodbye. We had been making daily trips to the hospital for weeks and had fallen into the dying routine with its waiting, and watching, and remembering, and lunches at the hospital café, and stories, and laughter , and sadness, and silence. I realized later that I had assumed that my father would just go on dying, but never actually die.

On the morning of November 11 I took my dog, Abby, for a walk in the school yard near my parents’ house. We stopped and talked to a neighbor who asked all about my father. When I got back to the house, it was a little after 9am, a later start than usual. My mother wasn’t quite ready. My brother was on the road, his trucking job not allowing him time to be with us that morning, although he was with us emotionally throughout. I told my mother that I would go to the hospital, see how things were, and then come back to pick her up.

When I got to hospital, I checked in with the nursing staff at the desk to see how my father’s night had been. Then I went to his room where he lay on his back, his mouth open, his breathing slowed. I spoke to him as I always did, reporting on the weather, talking a little about how the Steelers were doing. I put some water on a tiny sponge and dabbed his lips. I cleaned his nose. Then I sat on the naugahyde lounger beside him. His breathing was labored. I listened to him exhale and waited anxiously for his inhale. I counted the seconds between each breath. One, two, three, four, more anxious now, five, six, seven, finally another inhale and I felt relieved. Again, and again, and again. This went on for several minutes. Around 9.20am----one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine--- I stood up and looked at Dad. I listened and watched. I placed my hand on his chest. By then I knew he had died. I held his hand, his fingers still soft and warm.

I had the strangest sensation (perhaps my last moment of denial ) that my dad would wake up and tell me all about dying, what it was like, how it had gone, as if having triumphed over the last of life’s challenges, he could give me some wisdom about what to expect.

I was forty-eight when he died. I am sixty-three now. I carry his pocket knife with me every day. At one time I lost his knife for two years so my brother bought me another one exactly like it. Now I can carry two. I have his watch on the night stand beside my bed. When my wife and I watch our two little granddaughters (ages four and two), they love to play in our bedroom. The two-year old, Makayla, always stands on the bench beside my nightstand and puts my father’s watch on. It slides up to her armpit as she holds her arm up high. When she is done, she puts it back exactly where she found it.

When I was forty-eight, I hoped my father’s death would teach me about dying. At sixty-three, I think it has taught me mostly about living; that life is short but beautiful; that even though time is measured, there is enough, if you pay attention ; and that everything that matters in life is here, now.

Much of Seaburn's fiction focuses on loss, healing and hope. Check out his novels by clicking on "more..." under his picture above.

David B. Seaburn, Ph.D. , L.M.F.T. , is a writer, marriage and family therapist, psychologist, and minister who has written four novels and two professional books.

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The day my father died.

by Mervyn Morris

The Day My Father Died - Mervyn Morris

The day my father died I could not cry; My mother cried, Not I.

His face on the pillow In the dim light Wrote mourning to me, Black and white.

We saw him struggle, Stiffen, relax; The face fell empty, Dead as wax.

I’d read of death But never seen. My father’s face, I swear, Was not serene.

Topple that lie, However appealing: That face was absence Of all feeling.

My mother’s tears were my tears, Each sob shook me: The pain of death is living, The dead are free.

For me my father’s death Was mother’s sorrow; That day was her day, Loss was tomorrow.

from I been there, sort of: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2006), copyright Mervyn Morris 2006, used by permission of the author and the publisher.

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When My Father Died

When my father died I felt apart of me die with him, because I knew I would never see him again. Ever since that day my life has never been the same. November 9,2001 was the end, but also a new beginning. BOOM BOOM BOOM! was the sound from the guns that I heard. Suddenly my eyes were opened, I awoke from a deep sleep. I vividly remember counting seven shots, and my first thought was “Who just got killed?”. I was so terrified, because they sounded so close. I knew the shooting was very near my house, because I saw the lights from the guns reflect through my window onto my wall. I laid still in my bed and full of paranoia. As my heart pounded extremely fast, I heard a car drive off fast, the tires screeching loudly. Then I slowly looked out the window, even though I was full of fear. There he was flat on his back with his arms and legs spread away from his body. I had to catch my breath, because I felt like half of my soul left my body. I became overcome with denial “No, not my dad, he wouldn’t leave me!”. Both good and bad memories flashed in my mind. Simultaneously I heard my mother screaming downstairs “I don’t know how to tell her, how and I going to tell my baby?!”. It was amazing how thin the walls were that day. A few minutes later I heard feet walking up the steps toward my room. My godmother came into my room and sat down next to me on my bed. She was hesitant, but she eventually parted her lips to say “Your father is dead”. When she told me that my father was dead I felt extreme heartache fill me. I kept thinking “My daddy was dead”. My face was wet from my tears, my throat sore from my crying, and my head throbbed from my headache. She held me and told me it would be ok but I felt otherwise. During my dads funeral I was literally in shock. All I heard were screams and cries of sorrow. At one point in time I looked around the church, and realized that there were over two hundred people who had similar feelings. I closed my eyes and opened them back up slowly because I wanted someone to tell me that this was all a bad dream, but it was reality. I probably seemed fine externally, but internally I felt like I was dieing. My pastors wife read the poem I had written about my dad to the mourners, and when my pastor preached I was open enough to listen. That’s when the casket closed, I cried so hard I thought I was going to vomit. At that point I knew he was gone forever. My body was going through a major breakdown, and I was slipping into depression. Once everyone got to the burial site, I watched to casket go into the ground. When the dirt started to be put on top of the casket my grandmother burst into tears. She had lost one of her sons and I lost my father. I had lost my father, but I had not lost hope. Being that he was abruptly taken away from me when I was only ten years old, I realized I had to develop strength instead of developing weakness. I had to gather myself and I come out of my depression. Everything around me was changing rapidly. I was no longer daddy’s baby girl, I began to see things in a different light. I had to turn something negative into something positive. What my father wanted for me in life is what I strive for now. His death has motivated me to strive for greatness. His death helped me become the person I am today. I don’t’ have any children, I’m pretty independent, and I want enjoy the better things in life. I’m proud to be his daughter.

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The Person I Became After My Father’s Death

A fter my father dies, I become, for a time, someone I do not recognize. Entire weeks are all but lost to me, scooped out of my once airtight memory. Our rental term ends two months after the funeral, and when we move into another house, I hardly remember packing or unpacking.

I don’t know how to ask for leave from my job. I tell myself that I can’t afford to take unpaid time off anyway. The truth is that I have always been able to work, and now I learn that grief is no hindrance to my productivity. I bank on this, even feel a kind of twisted pride in it. It doesn’t matter to me whether I take care of myself, because I do not deserve the care. All my parents wanted was to spend more time with us, to see us more than once a year or every other year, and I never found a way to make it happen, and now my father is dead. When other people—my husband, my friends—try to tell me that I am not at fault, I barely hear them. Punishing myself, keeping myself in as much pain as possible, seems like something a good daughter should do if it is too late for her to do anything else.

There is a flurry of activity in the run-up to the publication of my first book . My publisher sends me to conferences, schedules readings and interviews. I am grateful, and frankly surprised, to be getting any attention at all, and so of course I tell everyone that I am more than ready to do my part, to help the book succeed. I know how important it is to my career, and I feel enormous pressure not to let down any of the people who are working so hard on it. I want it to have a fighting chance, too, because it is a book in which my father still lives.

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When I stop working, it’s not to rest but to head to a soccer game or swimming lesson, or plan a Girl Scout meeting, or chaperone a school field trip. I treat myself like a machine, which makes it easy for the people I work and volunteer with to see and treat me that way too. “It’s been hard,” I say with a shrug, when asked how I’m doing, “but I’m hanging in there.” One day, my older child calls me out on my usual choice of words.

“How come you always tell people that you’re ‘hanging in there’?” she asks.

Well, I think, a bit defensively, because I am. Am I not still doing what needs to be done: getting up every morning and going to work, taking care of my family, saying yes to anything anyone asks me to do? I haven’t dropped a single ball at work. My publishing team has thanked me for my promptness in replying to their emails, for being so great to work with. I am an expert at grieving under capitalism. Watch and learn.

All the while, I keep daydreaming about walking into traffic.

From the moment the thought pushes its way into my grief-muddled brain, I know that I could never act on it. It’s not that I want to hurt myself—it’s that I cannot seem to work up any remorse when I think about no longer being alive. Nor does the thought frighten me, as it always did before. What if you didn’t have to feel this way anymore? my mind proposes, in moments that are deceptively calm, moments when I am not sobbing in the shower or screaming in my car because I cannot scream at home. What if the pain could just end?

As a child, I knew that I was not permitted to indulge in the hyperbolic or sarcastic statements other kids made about wanting to die, because my father would erupt. Toward the end of sixth grade, my teacher had everyone in my class write a fake will; my most charitable reading is that the exercise might have been intended to help us identify the things that were most important to us as we moved from elementary into middle school, symbolically leaving our childhoods behind. Most of my classmates made light of the task— I hereby bequeath my Game Boy to my little brother, because he always steals it anyway —but I remember little of what I wrote in my will, only my father’s fury over the assignment. “You’re 12 years old!” he yelled. He threatened to call my teacher. And then all the fight went out of him, his voice numb as he told me about being 21 years old and witnessing the death of his favorite cousin. The two of them had shared an apartment in a Cleveland high-rise, and one night my father came home to find him about to jump from their window. He pleaded with him, tried to stop him, but his cousin leaped before he could reach him. Dad had always blamed himself.

Read More: Grief Is Universal. That Doesn’t Make It Less Isolating

It takes me months, after his death, to realize that I am not fine, or hanging in there. I go to see my doctor for a long-overdue physical and break down in the exam room, sobbing as she hands me one flimsy tissue after another. I leave with a referral to a counseling practice, but manage to find one closer to my house, close enough to walk, because I know I’ll come up with a million reasons to reschedule or cancel otherwise.

During one early session, my therapist, the first Asian American therapist I’ve ever worked with, asks me if I know what has kept me from harming myself as I flounder in grief. I don’t even have to think about the answer. “My family,” I say. My children, who have no idea how dark my thoughts have become. My husband, who keeps our household afloat on days when I cannot manage anything beyond the workday. My sister, who faithfully checks on me every week. My mother, whom I text and call so often it probably annoys her. “The people I love still need me.”

“And you still need them,” she says. “You don’t want to leave them.”

I feel the truth of these words in my bones, try to keep them close.

Slowly, I find my footing again. When I catch myself faltering, fumbling in the dark for a thread to follow back to the person I was before, the thing that often keeps me from despair is talking with my mother. Sometimes I wish that she would voice some concrete need, ask me to do something for her, but she seems to be taking care of herself—it occurs to me that this might be easier than taking care of both herself and Dad, as much as she misses him. I can sense her sorrow and restlessness, always, but there is a driving, don’t-quit vitality about her, even in mourning.

One day, she tells me she has decided to get rid of Dad’s lift chair, and one of their old end tables. I never liked that table, Dad did. I am learning that I can make decisions based on what I want—that if I don’t like something, I can just make a change. Another day, we discuss whether she might get a dog; it has been a long time since she had one in the house. She sheepishly tells me she used some of the money I gave her to buy new miniblinds. “That’s perfect!” I say. I don’t care how she spends it, as long as it’s useful.

Read More: How I Found My Desire to Live After My Wife Died

It’s hard for either of us to imagine her remarrying. But as she begins to plan the next stage of her life without my father, I realize that I can picture her living out her own days in peace—and, more important, it seems she can as well. My heart lifts when she tells me that she is planning a trip to Greece with two of her friends from church, intending to use what’s left of my father’s life-insurance payout to make her first-ever trip outside the country. They will visit monasteries and holy sites, see the sights, and swim in the sea; the trip is to be part pilgrimage, part escape.

After that adventure, I think, I will help her consider what she wants her new life to look like. I can be her sounding board, if nothing else. I know her ties to Oregon are strong after four decades there, but maybe someday she’ll decide that she wants to move closer to us on the East Coast. Or maybe we will relocate to the Northwest and provide more support to her once our kids are done with school. There’s no need to figure everything out now, I tell myself. Dad has been gone only a matter of months. We have time. Mom has time.

I feel certain she has never doubted, for a second, that living is worth it.

Chung is a TIME contributor and the author of A Living Remedy , from which this essay was adapted

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After My Dad Died, I Realized I Knew Nothing About the Grieving Process

Here's what I learned through the pain, and what I hope to share with others.

Hearing “I’m so sorry for your loss” after the death of a loved one is the equivalent of a politician sending “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting. Sure, it might be well-intentioned, but it can feel empty.

Now, I’m no expert on how to “handle” death. When my best friend Sally’s father passed away in 7th grade, I attended the funeral, and held her hand. After the services concluded, I assumed that my role was to be a constant source of fun—a natural assumption for a 13-year-old. It wasn’t until years later that Sally revealed to me that I had focused so much on distracting her with impromptu dance parties, that I hadn’t actually been there for her in the way that she truly needed.

When my own father passed away in July 2018, after a seven year battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells, it shifted my notion of grief. I realized that you don’t move past it—you go through it, and you continue to go through it, like you’re paddling in a canoe through a muddied river. Sometimes you’re sailing smooth, and sometimes you get stuck in the mud. And though I’m not a psychiatrist or counselor—and while mourning takes on different forms for everyone—I wanted to share what brought me comfort.

I realized I might always feel sad, but I don’t have to feel guilty.

Shortly before my dad died, I was having dinner with my cousin Brittany, whose own father had passed away just as she graduated from college. She spoke with great detail about a moment when she was riding the subway with her dad and chose to keep her headphones in as he was trying to speak to her about his faith. She described how she’d always be sad that her dad would never be at her wedding or meet her son Teddy, but the sadness was nothing compared to the guilt she felt while thinking back to those little moments when she could have done more.

I still have to remind myself that feeling guilty is not productive. After chiding myself for all the things I could have done with my dad, and replaying every negative remark I ever said, I realized guilt is an emotion that is draining and is not conducive to feeling better. Death is sad no matter who we’ve lost—that’s why we all cry when Mufasa dies in The Lion King . But after the movie, we are able to move on because we harbor no feelings of guilt or regret.

.css-meat1u:before{margin-bottom:1.2rem;height:2.25rem;content:'“';display:block;font-size:4.375rem;line-height:1.1;font-family:Juana,Juana-weight300-roboto,Juana-weight300-local,Georgia,Times,Serif;font-weight:300;} .css-mn32pc{font-family:Juana,Juana-weight300-upcase-roboto,Juana-weight300-upcase-local,Georgia,Times,Serif;font-size:1.625rem;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:0.0075rem;line-height:1.2;margin:0rem;text-transform:uppercase;}@media(max-width: 64rem){.css-mn32pc{font-size:2.25rem;line-height:1;}}@media(min-width: 48rem){.css-mn32pc{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-mn32pc{font-size:2.75rem;line-height:1;}}.css-mn32pc b,.css-mn32pc strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-mn32pc em,.css-mn32pc i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;} "Sadness can sometimes be a safe place to go to when you want to tap into memories and feelings."

If you’re fortunate enough to be able to spend time with someone leading up to their death, you can try your best to have the hard conversations. But if you don't have advance notice (or that type of relationship), be gentle with yourself. While guilt and regret can fester, I’ve found that sadness be a safe place to go to when you want to tap into memories and feelings, instead.

I’ve accepted that it’s okay to miss my dad deeply, and to be sorrowful that I didn't have a better relationship with him earlier in life. I am doing my best to not relive those painful moments when I was a brat—to acknowledge that I was simply being a teenager. I know that my dad harbors no ill will towards me for that.

When I was ready, I asked friends and family to share their favorite memories.

Immediately after his passing, I sent a mass email blind copying friends and family notifying them of my father’s death. I received many lovely messages—but a simple, heartfelt letter from my friend Whitney is the one that always stood out. She wrote: “I will always remember when we went to go see Zero Dark Thirty with him.” Whitney came to the movie expecting a thrilling performance by Jessica Chastain, but instead got my counter-terrorism expert father giving an in-depth and slightly terrifying film analysis. It was a memory of my father that I had all but forgotten, but was so quintessentially him. Whitney gave me back a piece of him that would have otherwise faded.

After my father’s burial service, friends and family held a brunch where everyone went around the table and shared a lively anecdote. I got to hear so many stories I had never heard of, and I felt incredibly connected to my father—and, unexpectedly, at peace with my grief.

Grief can be triggered at the strangest times.

My father’s death hits me most deeply when I’m driving in the car by myself, listening to the 70s Sirius XM radio station. Not only was he a preeminent scholar of rock music from 1968-1974, but some of our best memories together were spent on the road. After I started working at YouTube, Dad loved sending me his favorite live versions of songs he found on the platform.

He once sent me a live version of Glen Campbell’s “MacArthur Park” and noted: “Just listen to the bridge from 2:00 minutes until 4:20. It's a standalone mini song. Awesome.” Shortly after the funeral, the song came on the radio on my way to work, and I absolutely lost it. I actually sang the song through my tears, and then sat in the YouTube parking lot for a few moments in silence.

Sometimes, grief hits you in weird moments, but that’s when you might need to let yourself live in that sadness the most.

I tapped into my network of loved ones in different ways.

Initially, I was filled with remorse when I realized I hadn’t been there for my friend Sally in a more emotionally in tune way. I felt silly for assuming that I would upset her if I reminded her of her dad—a person who, of course, was never far from her mind. But, as a 13-year-old who had only ever lost a goldfish, I wasn't well-equipped to help her talk through her trauma. Chief Distraction Officer was the best role I could play. And, she had others she could turn to for conversations that didn't involve which track we should dance to.

If you're fortunate enough to have a supportive network, many will say "I am here for you.” The key, unsaid part of that sentence is "...for whatever you need." Not every person is going to be the right person to help you navigate your pain. As best you can, decipher how you can lean on those individuals based on what they excel at—the pal you can always count on to bring you wine, the cousin who'll go for a run with you when you need to clear your head, or the old roommate with the most comfortable shoulder to cry on—and communicate your needs to them.

"Not every person is going to be the right person for your grief."

If someone close to you ultimately proves to have low death EQ, try not to be disappointed. Know that even if they fumble over the right words to say, or text you a meme when you were hoping for sincerity in that moment, that they love you, and are trying. You get to decide who to reach for to meet your ever-changing needs.

Right after my dad’s funeral, my group of friends from high school were sitting around me in the sun, making sure that I was being sufficiently hugged. The first person who extended his arms was my ex-boyfriend Nick, who had been there when my dad was first diagnosed seven years prior. Although we were no longer romantically involved, there was no one else I wanted to be held by more.

Finally, I learned that grief changes—and I can communicate that to my loved ones.

When Dad first died, I told everyone that I didn't want to talk about it. I even sent very clear instructions via text to my family as I boarded my flight home to Seattle. I wanted everyone to treat me as if nothing had happened. I had spent the previous week crying 24/7, and to put it bluntly, I was simply tired of blowing my nose. I would not allow myself to start crying even one more time. And because I told people that I didn’t want to talk about it, eventually, they listened.

After about two months, when I did actually want people to ask about my dad and to check in on me, I felt deeply sad that everyone had seemingly moved on—and I was left painfully alone.

In retrospect, I truly did need that time to just feel normal and not talk about it. I was emotionally exhausted. That being said, the tide turned. Rather than gently explaining that I was ready to talk, I lashed out at my loved ones, accusing them of being forgetful, when really, they were just trying to respect my wishes.

Know that if you have a change of heart, you have to communicate that to those who are more than eager to help.

"That place of grief? It can also be a peaceful place of remembrance."

Two years later, I have better “grippage” (one of my dad’s favorite made up terms) over my grief. I know inevitably there will be further learnings, low points, and realizations.

I also know that turning on the 70s music playlist will make dinosaur tears run over my smiling cheeks, and that hearing the lyrics to “MacArthur Park” will always bring me to a place of grief—but it can also be a peaceful place of remembrance.

Alexandra Eitel graduated from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University with a degree in International Affairs, with a focus on China. She started her career at the Creative Artists Agency in New York City in the celebrity commercial endorsement group. She moved to Silicon Valley in 2017 to help start YouTube's Public Figures business, a team that helps traditional celebrities and TikTokers start YouTube channels. Currently, Alexandra is in her first year of business school at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Alexandra wrote this article about her experience with grief when her father passed away after a 7-year battle with multiple myeloma.

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The Death of My Father, Essay Example

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Two years ago, just a few weeks before Christmas, my roommate, who was clearly upset, sat me down on the couch in our living room and broke the news to me that my father had died earlier that afternoon.

My father had been ill for a long time.  He had a long history of cardiac disease which was exacerbated by the fact that he was a chronic smoker, was overweight, and did not much care either or exercise or for healthy food (something which, I am sorry to say, I seem to have inherited from him!).  I knew he was in the hospital in New York, where his second wife was taking care of him as he prepared to have cardiac surgery to try to repair the damage that a lifetime’s worth of misuse had done to his heart.  He never made it through the surgery, dying right there on the operating table in spite of the surgical team’s attempts to save his life.

When my roommate first told me the news, I remember almost having difficulty putting the words together in that simple sentence to give it meaning. “Your father is dead” is not a difficult sentence to say, but it takes a while to wrap your head around it. And then the sharpest pain hit me as the words drove home and I remember bursting into tears and crying on my into a pillow for a long time.  I remember being offered a glass of wine to calm my nerves down – it was a blood-red Cabernet Sauvignon – and it tasted bitter and sweet and lovely all at once.  I remember calling my brother – he was half-way across the country, going to graduate school in Michigan, and I hadn’t seen him for a while since we had both been so busy with school – and I remember him saying “This sucks”, which summed up the situation pretty nicely.  I remember we cried together, and I drank more wine, and a sick and sour sort of feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.  I also remember I went to bed and slept really heavily that night.

It was financially impossible for me to get to the funeral on such short notice, and my father had decided to be cremated and to forego any kind of memorial service, so there wouldn’t have been anything to attend even if I had been able to go.  But I took the next couple of days off and I remember, those first few days, feeling very tender, as though I had been sunburned and the skin had just peeled off.  I slept a lot those first few days, and ate very little, and took several walks out in the woods on my own.

My father and I had been estranged for a long time. He had been abusive and I was glad when he and my mother divorced and he was finally out of my life. I did not have any contact with him for a long time after the marriage broke up.  But in the last few years of his life, we had started emailing back and forth and even had had a few phone calls. He was planning to visit me next fall for  vacation, only he died before we got to see each other again.

That has been two years ago now.  I do not feel raw like I did when I first got the news, but it is not something I like to think about, either.  I do, though, have all the emails from the last few years that we sent back and forth to each other and I have a box of photographs that my mother sent me of the two of us when I was just a kid, before things went sour. Eventually, I will be brave enough to read through those emails and look through those pictures. But it is something that I know I am not ready for yet. In a way, though, I think part of me is almost looking forward to it, as I feel like it will cauterize a wound that has never quite closed up for me.  And I know that his death has given me a lot more sympathy for other people who are grieving, since I know now that it can take so many forms – some pretty conventional, some wildly inappropriate – and that even though you feel you have “gotten over it” with the passage of time, you know that it is always somewhere just below the surface of your skin.

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“Cozy, Honest, Imperfect”: SYML Dives into the Raw Depths of ‘The Day My Father Died,’ an Album of Grief & Love

SYML’s Brian Fennell delves into the depths of his raw, warm, and welcoming sophomore album ‘The Day My Father Died,’ a record channeling grief and love into cathartic and captivating indie folk beauty.

Stream: “believer” – syml.

G rief and love are odd bedfellows at first glance, but upon closer look, they make the perfect pair.

Grief, for one, is absolutely gut-wrenching and life-changing; once you know it, it sits with you for the rest of your life, no questions asked. You can drown in its darkness and surrender to its empty weight. And yet more often than not, that grief stems from love itself – in particular, losing someone you love so intensely, that you feel their absence every day. SYML’s sophomore album is a testament, a reaction, and a reflection of these two opposite, yet inseparable experiences: Uncompromisingly raw, warm, and welcoming, The Day My Father Died channels heartache and grief, love and connection into cathartic and captivating beauty. Emotional wreckage has never had a more uplifting soundtrack, and intimacy has never hit this hard.

And yet, everything about this album is utterly inspiring.

Hold the call, hold the call Good love makes you hesitate Rolling slow, go so slow Melting like a long last drink I wouldn’t change one thing

Touch me like a lover speak to me like a friend teach me like my father taught me how to live again hold me like no other embrace my brokenness don’t preach to me, a believer in a choir you’re that hallelujah sweetness on my lips, – “ believer ,” syml.

“ I want to show you that life comes in circles; I want to show you life ,” SYML sings on the title track. Released February 3, 2023 via Nettwerk Music Group,  The Day My Father Died is an hour-long indulgence in the wonder of life and human connection. Born out of grief, the follow-up to 2019’s eponymous debut album and last year’s poignant  DIM  EP is, to put it bluntly, a sonic celebration.

And like any good celebration, this one has its share of highs and lows, and it leaves us in a space full of memory and reverie.

Woke up on your skin I’ve never felt like this before Woke up trembling I feel electric underwater

Lay me down low, lay me down low i’m coming down slow, s o lay me down low, we made a fire in the purest way when you explode it’s my holiday i took too much it was my mistake but i can be blamed, i’m insatiable, keep me howling, baby i’ll be your beast, i’ll be your dog keep me howling, baby and i’ll keep begging you for more, – “ howling ,” syml ft. lucius.

“The Universe is expanding into infinity and no human brain has ever understood what that really means in terms of what came before us and what comes next,” SYML’s Brian Fennell explains. “The natural becomes supernatural and gods are created to fill the void that we find ourselves in. The ONLY thing we can fully experience and attempt to understand is… each other. We are churches and we worship human bliss in the form of intimate love in all its brokenness and perfection.”

Love has always flowed freely throughout SYML’s breathtaking music; here, that love manifests through heartbreak and loss, personal and familial growth, and Fennell’s own artistic transformation.

“The story behind this record starts in the pandemic, and it was really around the time that my dad was dying of cancer,” he tells  Atwood Magazine . “The album title sort of is on the nose a little bit with that, with the day my father died. But rather than the record being sort of this mournful process, that process really happened in the EP that came before the record, called Dim . That was a grouping of a few songs that were written around the same time as the full length. They naturally grouped themselves, thematically and stylistically too, into two separate projects. So the full length record is really more of an opportunity to talk about the snapshot of the last couple years of going through what my dad went through, but also what our family went through, and what the world was going through at large. Rather than it being this sort of mournful thing, it really is a digestion of how things big and small change forever in our lives when these life events happen, like a kid is born, which we also went through. But also, when somebody leaves us or we fall in love or whatever, we can’t see things the same way ever again.”

“I guess my vision changed over the course of the recording,” he adds. “You go into the studio either by yourself or with a team of players or producers or whatever, and if you do it well, I think it will change during that process. Working with producer Phil Ek, who’s also from Seattle like me, was really great. He was equal parts therapist as he was coach as he was cheerleader. I think if you allow yourself to be vulnerable, which I think my music does lend itself a little bit, or at least I try to have it be a vulnerable art piece, it doesn’t always mean that creating that thing is easy or without its defenses.”

It’s the easiest thing in the world to write a sad ballad. If this is my job and this is what I take seriously, the challenge should be to channel that into something new that I haven’t said before.

The Day My Father Died is an evolution for SYML’s music – one that expands the artist’s world well beyond the atmospheric indie folk balladry of his debut.

“It’s hard for me to have a perspective on it,” he admits. “It was such a weird breaking down and building back up process mentally and physically, so I’ve needed this much time to really be stoked on it. I think it’s really beautiful and I really like it; the words I’ve been using about it are that it feels very honest and organic in its way, but it also feels really careful and comfortable. And that took a lot of time; I don’t think that listener will immediately get that, because it doesn’t sound like we spent years editing it. It does feel like an accurate account of what was going on in the studio, but to commit that to tape, and to the record in that moment, was a wild ride. I look back on it fondly, but also at the same time, I’m glad it’s done and I’m glad it will be shared now.”

The album’s title is an homage and an instant context clue, but it’s really the album’s starting point.

“It’s a lyric from a song on the record… The lyric on the record is, ‘ I was born on the day my father died, ‘ and that’s a bit of a nod to him as a father and me as a father. And then me just as an existing human, whether that’s as a father to my kids, a partner to my wife, a friend, a client, whatever my role is, it’s been influenced by this event, right? And like I said, this is not a record full of dirges. It’s certainly more of a celebration than it is sadness. But I think just like everybody, you need to carry all the things at the same time. You have to acknowledge that sadness goes with you in your happiness and in your celebration, because if you ignore it, awful things happen. I’m not trying to be tongue-in-cheek with the title at all; even though there are some tongue-in-cheek songs on it, I think it’s meant to just be like, ‘Hey, even in the most serious stuff we deal with, it’s okay to not take yourself too seriously.’ “

From the heartrending, soul-stirring opener “Howling” featuring Lucius and  the charming, soothing grooves of “Believer” and “Feel Your Pain,” to the pure magic of “The Day My Father Died” and “Chariot,” and the soft, loving glow of “You and I” featuring Charlotte Lawrence, “Tragic Magic,” and “Better Part of Me” featuring Sara Watkins,  The Day My Father Died makes for an exceptionally moving, emotionally cleansing hour of music.

“I’ve been saying that, at least for now, my favorite song is the last tune, which is called ‘Corduroy,'” Fennell says. “I think for most folks it’ll sound maybe the most SYML-y because it’s pretty lush and really has an emphasis on pretty melodies and stuff. But lyrically, I’m proud of it because it’s a little bit of, again, with that snapshot of that synopsis from  birth to where I’m at now.  I love that challenge in the song to be able to talk about that massive span of time at this point within four minutes or whatever. So I love that tune. It’s a good send-off, it’s free of cynicism, and free of stuff that I love to wallow in, which is good. If for anything else, I guess it’s good for me, like therapy.”

“Corduroy” is also a lyrical favorite. “There’s songs on this record that are about my experience with faith in my past and spirituality, but in the sense of it being a human thing instead of a throw it into the ether and not understand it kind of thing, the last verse on “Corduroy” talks about what happens when we have knowledge, like when we gain enough knowledge to sort of disprove something we’ve had faith in. And it doesn’t have to just be religious; it can be your understanding of love or of how to be loved or whatever… And when you gain that powerful knowledge through whatever means, and it erases the faith you had in that, what a nauseating feeling that is, but also like, you wrote a beautiful thing because you’ll never have to live under false pretenses again, in that way anyway. That last verse of “Corduroy” is really powerful to me.

When you realize it’s not your fight And you can’t avoid a chance to reconcile Lay em down, the stones, the stones will never cry No stone will ever cry

No stone will every cry, when the poison fruit tastes sweeter than you like it’s a fertile place to propagate a lie while you’re waiting for the nausea to subside let’s drink to what is right let’s share a drink tonight, spend it in wartime and save up in peace, love will be all that you need, – “ corduroy ,” syml.

He adds, “Some of these songs were started lot of years ago, before even SYML – some old nuggets that hung around and ended up being useful. It can be a hard thing, because that thing that you saved from years ago, actually, is not cool. You’re just being lazy and you can’t come up with new ideas. But in this case, there were a couple nuggets that were useful and grew into songs on their own. I’m thinking like a song called ‘Laughing at the Storm,’ which has three part harmony the whole way through, is something I wouldn’t have guessed that I would’ve done a couple years ago. So, there’s also little gems like that.”

“Just like with anything that I put out, a large part of the joy is that it would be echoed back to me, whether I know it or not, like that listeners sort of absorb it and that it comes back into the general universe of human understanding or whatever like that,” Fennell shares. “‘Cause there’s a lot of hard stuff, right? There’s a lot of hard stuff that we all go through and it feels really isolating, but the reality is that we probably live on a way narrower spectrum than we think. So if that can help somebody, then that’s my hope.”

“What I’m taking away from it is that, you always learn from every recording experience and every writing experience. You learn like a new set of colors almost, in a new way, of breaking down a way you thought you knew before. I hope you know that I’m going into the next season of writing and recording with a better vocabulary.”

Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside SYML’s The Day My Father Died  with Atwood Magazine as Brian Fennell goes track-by-track through the music and lyrics of his sophomore solo album!

:: stream/purchase The Day My Father Died  here ::

Stream: ‘the day my father died’ – syml, ::  inside the day my father died   ::.

Howling is the perfect song to start an album that explores my infatuation with what we are. We are all beautiful beings that long for completion, but we remain insatiable. In the house of the most holy, we are tortured animals and we sing hoping to reach enlightenment. Holly and Jess were gracious enough to join me here, and anyone who knows Lucius knows the soul and gravitas they bring to their songs. I wanted this song to feel like a church choir towards the end, and they delivered.

To be a believer in something is as pure as it gets.  for me, it’s when i realized it was never a god or magical ghost, but my lover and how i fell at her feet., laughing at the storm, laughing at the storm has been banging around for years in various forms. i’m happy it found a home on this record. i love the feeling of a desert storm, which is what this song sounds like to me. i also love the idea of each of us being guided by an inner child who is restless and never fully content. that energy is wild, sweet home is never one place. it is never one person. it is a collision, beautiful and hideous, of every place and every person that we entangle ourselves with that allows us to recognize “home”. this song feels cozy and nostalgic, like the nostalgia of something good is enough to carry us through any storm. that is home., lost myself, lost myself is a sneaky sad song. not one minor chord can you imagine a notion more sad than the realization that you’ve lost who you are especially when you thought you knew yourself i think we all lose ourselves at times. also, the fact that guy garvey, from elbow, joined me on this song will never cease to blow my mind. i’ve been a fan of guy since i started writing songs back at university. his verse is one of my favorite on the record..

The Day My Father Died

I wrote most of this album before my dad died and i recorded all of it after he passed. i remember that day vividly. i felt the weight of the sunset. i remember breathing through it … and it was quietly visceral. my dad left behind many good and beautiful things. this was the last song i wrote for the album (and the only song on the album i wrote after he passed). instead of writing a song that felt as heavy as that sunset, i wrote one that feels light on its feet. one we can dance to, knowing that life comes to an end for all of us..

Feel Your Pain

“ feel your pain” sounds patronizing as fuck normally. but to meet someone where they are and hold their burden of pain with them . . . there’s nothing more beautifully human. trauma rarely heals alone and in the dark., tragic magic, this is one of my favorite songs on the album. my parents never dragged us to church, but i chose to go to youth group in middle school. that time and those people were a positive influence in my life. with an adult’s perspective, i can now see the ways in which we were “marketed” to in the boom of 90s pop christianity, which leaves me feeling icky and duped. the whole package has always had this too good to be true taste, like a miracle drug. it should have been marketed as magic, and it really is tragic. that rhyming title always makes me smile..

I have always associated chariots with those from ancient stories and history, containers with wheels made of precious metal, carrying royalty. But I never liked that so this song asks what if chariots were vessels of love and deliverance? We recorded most of the album at Studio X in Seattle, which is an old church. A lot of the percussion and drum beats on this song were played on leftover church pews in the studio.

Marion is my partner. This song takes us through meeting each other, an early vacation we took in the honeymoon phase, and finally to me talking to our son about how I hope he finds his person like I found mine. Musically, this song reminds me of so many songs I loved in my formative years (the mid to late nineties). I’m pretty certain this is Marion’s least favorite song on the album.

Better part of me, when we talk about someone being the better part of me , it’s certainly a familiar trope. for me, there is a sweetness that is appropriate and not saccharin when we think about our “other”. love is certainly a journey full of conflict and challenge, and the best way to become better together is through being honest with ourselves and one another. and to have sara watkins join me on this song is something of a dream. nickel creek’s first album was a blueprint for me as i started singing and writing songs. i love her voice, and the tenderness and simplicity she brings to this song fits perfectly..

Baby Don’t Lie

Last winter, i woke up in the middle of the night and recorded a melody on a voice memo. that melody is the chorus for baby don’t lie . it feels luxurious to me, i don’t know why. i wrote the song around it to feel kind of slippery and lazy, like a poolside wealthy person who is bored with being wealthy but also desperate., you and i are soul mates, maybe. i’ve never believed in soul mates. i do believe in falling in love so deeply that nothing else matters. this is a simple song. it feels like it came out of familiar dirt. like someone came along, plucked me out of the ground, washed me off and fell in love with me. charlotte lawrence’s voice is perfect for this song. she moves so effortlessly between airy and focused..

Being sad and drunk feels like Caving In . A bit hopeless, a bit ok with it all. Apathetic and earnest. Pleading to no one in particular. For the melody and music, I wanted to give a nod to two of my favorites: Jeff Buckley and Soundgarden.

My favorite outfit when i was 6 was a pair of blue, corduroy overalls. originally, i started writing this album “the day my father died” about the tension i have felt about my relationship with faith. i don’t know if that’s because my dad was sick when i wrote most of these songs or not. i spent a lot of time trying to focus my anger and cynicism, which left me empty. but through the writing process, i was able to realize that my tension was never rooted in the things that made me angry or cynical, it was simply in trying to understand myself and others. i think that’s true for many people. this album turned into an exploration of that. and corduroy felt like the perfect song to end the album since it feels like a return to the innocence of my youth; moving forward into the unknown with a sense of peace and outlook on the world without judgement., :: stream/purchase  syml  here ::, connect to syml on facebook , twitter , instagram, discover new music on atwood magazine, :: stream syml  ::.

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Personal Narrative: The Death Of My Father Essay

Thave to say the death of my dad had a great impact on who | am now. My dad’s name was Elmo Lee he was about 35 when he died. He left behind 5 children my brothers Elmo,and Emerion and my sisters, Tiffany,Teja,and myself. I was never told what killed him or how he got it. It was over 3 years when he first started to get sick and become hospitalized, but i was not informed until it got worse. I was always a quiet child always stayed to myself. Just the vibe of being near people made me nervous I was even this way with my own family.

I feel my dad tried to get me to come out my shell and get me to open up to people by bringing me to his house in Flint,taking to his job, and take me to stay and meet my step mother, Tiffany Lee. It helped for a while, but then I started my first year of school and i went right back into my old ways. I was held back in the first grade by my grandma ,which I believe my dad had no knowledge of. It was tough dealing with the kids there. There were always talking about people’s appearances,which I never know why when they dress the same as them.

I was told to ignore them harder there was one girl that wouldn’t let me be the quiet girl. So one day she decided to push my buttons and pick on me. My dad told when someone hit you hit the back harder. So when she pushed me, I hit him as ard as a could, she was crying after seeing we were only 8 and 9, then she left me alone. Three years later came to harper woods. I hated it there, it was all the unwanted attention. Consent Group work or working with a partner,that wasn’t my thing.

I was always thinking of my dad,I still do today, he always made his way into my mind when I was was down or on a verge of a breakdown. In 5th grade I was put in speech class I didn’t know why, maybe they thought cause I don’t talk | have a speech problem. Once again, my dad came up my mind. At this time I have seen him lately and itt was not normal for him not to come see me. One morning out of the blue he came over I was sleep him and my grandma talk, then all of a sudden he was crying.

I had never seen him cry, he was a strong person,l never was told why he was crying, but just to give him a hug and tell him “it’s ok”. Then I was in the 8th that day still stuck with me seeing not everyone is strong and brave. I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be the shy, quiet girl and more! was going to be a new person something no one has seen. It was a hard process, but itt was worth it. In 8th with a 3. 2 GPAI was becoming the smart girl,yeah most people didn’t know was even there but some did. That was another step in making my dad proud, not that he wasn’t.

I ran into along the way hang with the bad kids, but I still got my work done. l became a favorite favorite student in all my classes,I didn’t like that much. couldn’t wait to get to high school. To bad I hated it the moment I walked over to that side of the school. 9th grade was the worst year of my life the year my dad first started to get sick,I didn’t find out till 2012, and I meet the mean girls. That may have slowed me down, but once they found out I was smart and not falling into their trap they changed the way they acted toward me.

They actually started to be nice to me and we became friends, i often feel I changed them for the better. My grades just got better and better sadly my dad got sicker and sicker from what I was told he died 3 times and was brought back. When | finally got to the 10 grade, he passed away while I was visiting him and my brothers and sisters it was the scariest things ever i didn’t know what to do, but at that moment my shell was completely shattered my youngest sibling need me and I have to be brave for them.

Today I’m am in the 11th grade and am at the top of my game, my grades are great, and I loved by many friends. If you have seen me from when I was little and me now you would not believe the difference and I hate that he’s not here today to see how much of a difference he made in my life. If it was for him for him I wouldn’t even consider college let alone go to one. I know he is proud of me and the accomplishment | have made. I plan on continuing down the right path.

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I'm a 41-year-old widow with young kids. Here are the 5 things no one tells you about parenting alone.

• My husband died six years ago, leaving me to parent our kids alone. 
• I learned five important things in my years as an only parent. 
• Making decisions for my kids all by myself can be exhausting some times. 

Earlier this month, my daughter turned 14. When she woke up in the morning, I was the only parent who wished her a happy birthday. When she went to bed, I was the only parent who could share a memory from the moment she was born. In between, I was the only parent to help with their homework, meet with teachers to discuss class schedules, pay the registration fee for track, listen and advise about friend drama, and do the million other visible and invisible things related to parenting. The next day, I did it all again.

The same way I have for the last six years since my children's father, my husband and co-parent, died .

That day, I became a young widow and an only parent.

Then, I didn't know the term only parent . I knew only that what I was about to do — raise two kids by myself — was going to be hard and humbling. I felt clueless, alone, and terrified.

Now, I know more. Admittedly, I'm still terrified but slightly less clueless, and the least I can do is share those truths with other only parents who might be feeling alone and terrified.

Making decisions alone doesn't get better as time goes by

Making every decision about and for my children, big and small, is exhausting. Every mistake is mine to own, and the weight of this responsibility never lightens, never eases. But only parenting does become more intuitive and the confidence does build.

Other parents don't understand what I'm going through

The only way to truly understand the nuances and challenges of only parenthood is to be an only parent.

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Other parents, those with a co-parent or partner who provides support, whether emotional, mental, physical, or financial, can't fully understand. And that's OK. Every parent has their own challenges that no one else can understand.

Finding the people who understand your challenges — there are communities of only parents — can make all the difference.

I remind people I'm an 'only parent'

The purpose of naming myself as an only parent—or solo parent—is not to win the mommy wars, not to prove that I have it harder than other moms. It's to feel seen. To feel a little less invisible in a world built for twos.

Naming my experience and distinguishing it from others is an act of giving myself and other only parents permission to be seen, heard, and understood.

My heart breaks for my kids

My kids will always have that space that can only be filled by their other parent. They will always know an absence — and there's nothing I can do or give to change that. That truth makes my heart break on a daily basis. Also, I know that in learning to live with that absence, in learning to move forward even when the path is hard, my kids are learning perseverance. They're learning — through example and experience — that the hardest moments pass, and you're not defined by your worst days.

Even when it's hard, I'm grateful

When the house is a mess, the kids are pushing all my buttons, and everything seems to be going wrong, there's still an underlying glimmer — sometimes a very faint, barely-there glimmer — of gratitude.

My husband doesn't get to see the kids grow up. He won't see them at their best or their worst, and I know he would have loved to. It means that I can't help but be grateful for the fact that I'm here — I get to be here.

It's a privilege not granted to all.

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Donald M. Payne Jr., 65, New Jersey Representative in Sixth Term, Is Dead

A Newark Democrat, he succeeded his father, who was the first Black member of his state’s congressional delegation.

By Sam Roberts

Representative Donald M. Payne Jr., a Democrat from Newark who succeeded his father, New Jersey’s first Black member of Congress, died on Wednesday in Newark in the midst of his sixth term on Capitol Hill. He was 65.

He had been hospitalized in Newark and unconscious since April 6, when he sustained a heart attack resulting from complications of diabetes, according to his office. His death was announced by Gov. Phil Murphy.

In 1988, Donald Payne Sr. fulfilled a dream he had publicly proclaimed 14 years earlier: being elected to the House as the first Black member of his state’s congressional delegation. He succeeded Peter W. Rodino Jr. , whom he had unsuccessfully challenged earlier and who had retired.

In 2012, shortly after Mr. Payne died at 77 , Donald Payne Jr. won a special election to fill the remainder of his term. He then survived a contentious six-way primary to win the Democratic nomination to represent the 10th District, which includes parts of Essex, Hudson and Union Counties, for a full two-year term beginning in January 2013.

The younger Mr. Payne was known for helping to secure $900 million in a federal allocation for the Gateway tunnel project under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York, and for his support of lead testing in school water systems to prevent cancer and other ailments, a measure that passed the House and later the Senate. He also pressed for improved emergency responses to hurricanes and other natural disasters and proposed a neighborhood gun buyback program to improve public safety.

When the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, before the 2022 election, he was chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials and the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Recovery.

In 2022, he had expected to face a primary challenge from his left flank. But a serious one did not materialize, and he won the Democratic nomination with 84 percent of the vote.

Donald Milford Payne Jr. was born on Dec. 17, 1958, in Newark. He was 5 years old when his mother, Hazel (Johnson) Payne, died, leaving his father to raise three children alone.

After graduating from Hillside High School in Hillside, N.J., in 1976, he studied graphic arts at Kean College (now Kean University) in Union. He began working for the New Jersey highway authority in 1991 — his jobs included Garden State Parkway toll collector — and in 1996 joined the Essex County Educational Services Commission as supervisor of student transportation.

He entered politics as president of the South Ward Young Democrats and began his electoral career in 2005 as a countywide candidate for Essex County freeholder, or commissioner. It was the same route his father had taken as a political novice in 1972. He was later elected president of the Newark City Council.

Mr. Payne had been running unopposed in the June 4 Democratic primary. It will be left to Governor Murphy to schedule a new date and a date for a special election to finish Mr. Payne’s unexpired term.

Mr. Payne’s survivors include his wife, Beatrice Payne, and their 25-year-old triplets, Donald III, Jack and Yvonne.

“With his signature bow tie, big heart and tenacious spirit, Donald embodied the very best of public service,” Governor Murphy said in a statement . “As a former union worker and toll collector, he deeply understood the struggles our working families face, and he fought valiantly to serve their needs. every single day.”

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the age of Mr. Payne’s triplets, who survive him. They are 25, not 13.

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Sam Roberts is an obituaries reporter for The Times, writing mini-biographies about the lives of remarkable people. More about Sam Roberts

US Rep. Donald Payne Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey, has died at 65 after a heart attack

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U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr., a New Jersey Democrat and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who replaced his father in the seat, died Wednesday after a heart attack this month that left him hospitalized, officials said. He was 65.

Gov. Phil Murphy called his fellow Democrat a “steadfast champion for the people of New Jersey” in a statement confirming Payne’s death.

Payne served for 12 years in the Newark-area seat his father had held for more than two decades. Representing a heavily Democratic and majority Black district, Payne drew strong marks from liberal organizations for his voting record.

“With his signature bowtie, big heart, and tenacious spirit, Donald embodied the very best of public service,” Murphy said. “As a former union worker and toll collector, he deeply understood the struggles our working families face, and he fought valiantly to serve their needs, every single day.”

New Jersey’s Democratic Party chair, LeRoy Jones Jr., called Payne a “towering figure in both our party and our community.”

The Congressional Black Caucus said Payne would be remembered for his kindness and generosity and called him an advocate for progressive causes including making college tuition free, expanding voting rights and fighting climate change.

Payne had previously served as City Council president in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, and on the Essex County Board of Commissioners.

Payne’s office had said his heart attack was connected to complications from diabetes. Payne’s father, Donald Milford Payne, held the congressional seat before him. When the elder Payne died in 2012, the younger ran successfully in a special election to succeed him.

Payne had won reelection six times since. The district covers parts of Newark and its heavily populated suburbs.

Murphy’s office declined to comment Wednesday on the governor’s plans to order a special election to fill the rest of Payne’s current term, which ends Jan. 3, 2025.

Payne already filed paperwork by the March deadline to run for reelection and is to appear uncontested on the June 4 primary ballot. Should he remain on the primary ballot and win the nomination, Democratic Party committee members in his district could choose a replacement candidate to run in the November general election.

The district is likely to remain in Democratic hands, with registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans there more than 6 to 1.

A New Jersey colleague, Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, called Payne a “truly great public servant” who liked to call him “Uncle Frank” and had fought to raise awareness for diabetes and colorectal cancer prevention and to replace lead pipes in Newark.

Another colleague, Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, called Payne a “thoughtful legislator, a dear friend, and a man of such a kind and affable nature that he was well-liked and respected” by both Democrats and Republicans.

“Most importantly, he was a devoted family man, and it was this role that drove his passion for the policies he pursued,” Thompson said.

As a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, Payne made school security a priority, helping to establish a School Safety Task Force at the Department of Homeland Security and pressing for federal agencies to take extra precautions for children and schools during emergencies, Thompson said.

“He leaves behind an important legacy through his congressional service: making children safer. In his honor, we will continue that legacy,” Thompson said.

Payne’s survivors include his wife, Beatrice, and their three children, Murphy said.

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Helen Vendler, a towering presence in poetry criticism, has died

Harvard professor emerita was considered the nation’s ‘leading poetry critic’.

Struggling as a single mother in 1967 to raise a son on scant funds while teaching 10 college courses a year, Helen Vendler realized that “the only way I could make my life easier was to give up writing” — something she couldn’t face.

" ‘They can’t make me,’ I said to myself in panic and fear and rage. ‘They can’t make me do that,’ " she recalled in an essay decades later. “I suppose ‘They’ were the Fates, or the Stars, but I knew that to stop writing would be a form of self-murder.”

As she had done before and would do again, Professor Vendler found a path through that crisis. And soon she published the second of some 30 books of poetry criticism she wrote or edited while becoming one of the most influential and esteemed figures in her field.

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Professor Vendler, whose careful consideration of poems helped some of her era’s best poets better understand what they had accomplished and what more they needed to do, was 90 when she died Tuesday in her Laguna Niguel, Calif., home, her family said.

“I believe poetry is for everybody,” Professor Vendler, who was still writing and publishing essays , said in an interview for this obituary as her health was failing.

She was the Arthur Kingsley Porter university professor, emerita , at Harvard University, where she began teaching in 1980. A university professorship is the highest honor Harvard bestows on a faculty member, and poets she wrote about afforded her their own recognition.

“Helen understood that all poets needed what she did so they could take the next step,” said Jorie Graham , a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who had barely heard of Professor Vendler when she reviewed Graham’s earliest work for The New York Times in the early 1980s.

“I encountered the most lucid account of what I was doing that I could ever hope for,” Graham, who became a friend and Harvard colleague , said of those first reviews. “She certainly taught me right away that there was more to a poem than I could fathom on my own.”

Seamus Heaney , the late Nobel Prize-winning poet whose work Professor Vendler championed early on, once said that “she is like a receiving station picking up on each poem, unscrambling things out of word-waves, making sense of it and making sure of it. She can second-guess the sixth sense of the poem.”

In a 2006 New York Times profile , Rachel Donadio called her “the leading poetry critic in America.”

For Professor Vendler, no other vocation would do.

Early on, “it gave me a ratifying satisfaction to vow that whatever ‘the profession’ might think of me, I would always write only about poetry, without confining myself to a single century or a single country,” she wrote in her 2015 book “The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: Essays on Poets and Poetry.”

In 2004, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Professor Vendler as the Jefferson Lecturer , the federal government’s foremost honor in the humanities.

In addition to writing scores of essays and reviews, Professor Vendler published books about poets such as Keats, Yeats, Wallace Stevens, and George Herbert. One book examined Shakespeare’s sonnets, another focused on Emily Dickinson, including poems other critics had ignored.

“I liked exhuming some of her largely uncommented upon poems,” Professor Vendler said in this year’s interview. “And I am extremely happy that I took it upon myself to write on each of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which no one had ever done.”

Last year, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her its gold medal for belles lettres and criticism, calling her “our foremost critic of poetry.”

“I do understand, I think, what it feels like to be a poet, even though I’m not one,” Professor Vendler told the Harvard Gazette afterward. “I was born with a mind that likes condensed and unusual language, which is what you get from poetry.”

Born in Boston on April 30, 1933, Helen Hennessy was a daughter of George Hennessy, who taught Romance languages at English High and Roxbury Memorial High, and Helen Conway Hennessy, who taught in the Boston Public Schools before resigning upon marrying because of rules requiring female teachers to be single.

Professor Vendler wrote that her mother “was the fount of poetry in the house, quoting it frequently in conversation.”

Talking at 9 months, Professor Vendler had a vocabulary of 100 words when she turned 1 (her parents kept a list). Her father, who had taught in Puerto Rico, passed along fluency in Spanish, French, and Italian to his daughters, Elizabeth and Helen, while their younger brother, George, “fled the house after school.”

Young Helen also learned some Latin in Catholic schools and by singing settings of Psalms at Mass. Her ear for music later guided her to some voices she celebrated in lyric poetry.

By high school, she was quietly rebelling against her “exaggeratedly observant Catholic household.” She “pleaded” to attend Girls Latin School and Radcliffe College, but her parents insisted she go to Catholic schools, which she found limiting.

“Women intellectuals were not thick on the ground in the Catholic Church,” she recalled in the interview for this obit. “There was no place for me to be. There was no club for me to join.”

At Emmanuel College, from which she graduated summa cum laude, Professor Vendler decided against studying literature — taught there, she wrote, “as a branch of faith and morals.”

Majoring in chemistry, she found science crucial to her intellectual development.

“I think it’s the base of everything I do,” she said in a 2004 National Endowment for the Humanities interview . “You have to be exact in all your writing in science: your flow chart has to go from beginning to end with all the steps accounted for, and all the equations have to balance out. Evidence has to be presented for each step of your reason.”

Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study mathematics at the University of Louvain, in Belgium, Professor Vendler decided en route to Europe that she would switch to literature and set aside thoughts of medical school.

Returning home afterward, she took a dozen courses in literature at Boston University as a special student in order to enter Harvard’s doctoral program, from which she graduated in 1960. On her first day, Harvard’s English department chairman told her: “We don’t want you here, Miss Hennessy. We don’t want any women here.”

Thirty-four years later, she became the first woman to receive the “university professor” distinction at Harvard, its highest honor for a faculty member.

While studying for her Harvard doctorate, she met Zeno Vendler , who had trained as a Jesuit priest and was a philosophy graduate student. They married, divorced a few years later, and she raised their son, David, alone.

Dr. Vendler turned down a job offer at Harvard to accompany Zeno to Cornell University. She taught there, at Haverford, Swarthmore, Smith, and for many years at Boston University . Starting in 1980, she held joint appointments at BU and Harvard until moving to Harvard full time in 1985 .

Being a mother, meanwhile, “made me a whole person and turned me into someone who had to pay attention to somebody,” she said in this year’s interview.

“Someone once called me and asked, ‘How do you explain your mother’s meteoric rise and career,’ and the best thing I could say was I never noticed,” said David Vendler, who lives in Laguna Beach, Calif. “She was a great mother and had a rule that she never worked while I was awake. She lived by that. She was a mom first.”

In addition to David, Professor Vendler leaves her brother, George of Hyannis, and two grandchildren.

Ranging in her writings across centuries of poetry, Professor Vendler provided an education to readers and poets alike — not just to students and not just about literature.

“You came away from reading a review of Helen’s or a book of Helen’s learning more about poetry, but also more about life,” said her friend Peter Sacks , a painter, poet , and Harvard professor. “She had this gift of seeing what the continuity of life and art might be, and to see the poem as a living entity.”

To poets, however, her writings had special resonance.

“When Helen undertook to explicate your work, then you knew what you had done and knew what you might need to do next,” Graham said.

For writers shaken by tremors of doubt, Graham said, the experience was “like being on a tightrope and feeling an unseen hand that said, ‘Trust me, you’re not going to fall.’ "

At Harvard, Professor Vendler also taught a celebrated core course, “Poems, Poets, Poetry,” which was aimed at non-humanities majors.

“I thought — and still think — that all people would like poetry if they were only brought up with it and shown how easily it is entered into and what enormous solace it has to offer,” she wrote in a 1994 essay .

Poems offered vital comfort and support to her as well.

“Helen needed poetry to live by,” Graham said. “She fashioned and honed her moral sense not through the church, but through the church of poetry — the whole history of poetry. I can’t imagine a poem that she didn’t know.”

Mark Feeney of the Globe staff contributed to this obituary.

Bryan Marquard can be reached at [email protected] .