Ed. Note: This article may bring up difficult feelings. If you are in crisis, please get support at https://988lifeline.org/.

I’ve been sitting a lot with my grief recently. I’ve been having trouble identifying the exact source of it, so I just keep gently asking myself, “where is this coming from?”

It has taken years to gain enough awareness of myself that I might be able to answer that question.

And so, due to some recent events, I have found at least one part of it. I have attended two funerals for people who were important to me. These gatherings of people who loved the deceased, and still love them now, broke me open. Broke my heart open. The gatherings, and the breaking open, allowed me to mourn the funeral that I will never be able to have for my dad.

The ambiguous loss of my father has been a fixture in my life. He is not dead, but I can not interact with him, so our relationship is dead. I thought that one day he might make progress in his mental illness, but that has not seemed to be the case. So, unfortunately, I have stopped expecting progress. I mourn that loss.

I also mourn that I won’t be able to have a proper funeral for him. We won’t be able to gather like we did for the others who we loved and lost. When he leaves the planet, he will simply return to that which created him. He will be at a distance from those who cared about him. I don’t know that I’ll be able to interact with him prior to his departure from this planet. I mourn that loss.

This was a man who built me, who shaped me. Who brought amazing things out of me. Who I thought I needed to support in order to continue my own existence on this planet. But I don’t. He wasn’t attached to me in the way that I thought that he was, and he drifted away. When he departed, I still needed him – because he set it up that way.

And now I don’t. Instead, he needs me. But he doesn’t need me in a healthy way. He needs me in a way that is detrimental to me. He needs support that I cannot provide. So I can’t go back to a relationship with him. And I mourn that loss.

Funeral of One

I have been playing two songs a lot recently: “Aeroplane” by Tim Minchin and “No Hard Feelings” by The Avett Brothers. These two songs have been speaking to me for a while, and I think I have finally realized why. These both speak to loss. The loss of death, the loss of separation. And I’ve realized that I’m using these songs to help me create the funeral that I need to properly mourn the loss of my father. I’m still working out the rest of the pieces, but I’ve become aware that I need to have a ritual in order to properly process this loss, so I’m creating what I’m calling a “funeral of one.”

I anticipate that I will do this on my own, just like I have had to process this loss on my own. To be clear, I have not done this without support. I don’t mean that I’m really in isolation. What I mean is that nobody else can process this loss for me. Also, most people don’t have a way to process ambiguous loss, so there’s no handbook for this.

Sometimes, though, people might not want to talk about the loss. Good, kind people are often afraid that they’ll make things worse by bringing it up. They might be worried that they’ll bring up feelings that you’re trying so hard to keep under control. So they don’t ask.

Sometimes they are afraid that talking about it will bring up feelings and emotions at inopportune times. Even though, in my experience, the feelings and emotions are living in me, just below the surface most of the time.

Sometimes they’re busy dealing with their own life challenges. And that is good and healthy for them. They need to be able to prioritize their work, their life, the things that bring them joy and peace.

So I walk the path alone.

Alone, but not by myself.

I’ve started to be able to bring the sense of togetherness into my mind, so even when I’m alone, I can feel the presence of those who care about me. I can listen to music that reminds me of them. I can remember the feeling of being at a gathering with them. I can tell stories about them.

Story Telling

This is a second part of the grief and the funeral. When I found that I needed to stop contact with my father, it was in a context of a lot of people falling away from contact with him. I thought that at some point, I would be able to revive the stories of my youth and tell them at gatherings. I have not been able to revive the stories, and I mourn that loss.

The recent funerals have shown a stark contrast between the times when we have been able to gather to mourn a loved one, versus the anticipated absence of a gathering to mourn the loss of my father. I won’t get to gather and mourn the loss of positive memories of him. I mourn that future loss.

I have recently come to the understanding that each member of my family of origin is in a different place regarding the loss of my father. Some have fully jettisoned him. Some are still in contact. We’re not the enmeshed family that we were, and we’re not on the same page of what we would like our family to look like moving forward.

It’s good that we’re not enmeshed, and that we’re beginning to be able to come together to define what we’d like our family to look like, what each of us needs at the moment. Regardless, I grieve the lost time, and the loss of the expectation of a certain version of our family.

I struggle to move forward without grieving these losses. Some family members have already grieved the losses, and some don’t see a need to grieve losses at the moment. So I’m learning to be in the non-enmeshed family. It’s a challenge, and I mourn the loss of the enmeshed family.

And I mourn these losses alone.

Alone, but not by myself.

Putting a Bow On It

So, I will build the funeral.

Slowly.

Taking my time.

And one day, I will be ready.

On that day, I will be able to have the “funeral of one.” I will sing the songs I need to sing, I will say the words I need to say. I will grieve as I need to.

Grieve the loss of the relationship with a man who fathered me and raised me. Grieve the loss of his need to hold so tightly to certain aspects of his life that he lost so many other aspects of his life – possessions, relationships, everything was upended. Grieve the fact that I don’t think that he “wanted” to do this, but he couldn’t find a way to keep himself from doing it.

A Nice, Happy Ending?

Well, I wish I could find a nice, happy ending here.

I think that the best I can do right now is this: I think that the process of making the “funeral of one” will be my way of honoring the parts of myself that loved my dad. The part that still loves my dad. That loves him, but can’t interact with him. The part that mourns that loss. And honoring all the rest of the parts of me that are still waiting to be seen. Even the parts that are still afraid to come out of hiding.

I hope that if you’re going through something like this, that you know that you’re not alone, and that you make sense.

When you feel like you’re the only one. When you feel like there’s nobody who wants to talk about it – maybe because it’s too big for them, maybe because it’s too scary for them. Whatever the reason. That’s their limitation, not yours.

Feel your feelings. Grieve the loss. Find support where you can. This is the way through it.