Yesterday was the 26th anniversary of my dad passing away. And it is a surreal experience to be performing a show about grief over the course of this month which, for me, is laden with it. But also nice and I’ve had plenty of time to develop a comfortable relationship with my grief.

The anniversary itself is always a tough day for me, even 20+ years later. While the pain and the shock of his sudden death is about 1000% less than it was on the day it itself, what has happened for me as the years stretch on is I reach milestones by which he has become a smaller and smaller part of my life and of the world; I watch him disappear, I watch him be forgotten which brings with it a new kind of grief.

First was when I turned 24.

My dad passed away exactly 1 week after my 12th birthday (— as a result my birthday is never 100% enjoyable for me because I remember him going to bed early on the night of my 12th birthday with a headache so I view my birthday as the beginning of his end and I often relive the entire week leading up to his passing starting on my birthday because of that, but I digress).

A week after my 24th birthday, I realised that my dad had officially been absent from my life for the same amount of time that he was apart of it. So from that moment on, he would become a smaller and smaller fraction of my life. He died when I was so young, he was ultimately a stranger to me and I often wonder things about him, what he liked, would he be proud, I would love for him to have been able to meet my partner as I think they would’ve gotten along.

Birthdays, anniversaries pass unnoticed by the world. I feel how small we all are when I notice how his absence goes unnoticed by the world at large, even though it creates a huge hole in my life. And I realise how quickly we all will be forgotten, including me.

I believed that I would die young for a long time, as he did, (and I still sort of do). I was sure I wouldn’t make it to 25, then the years pass on birthday after birthday and I am still here. As I get older I realise I better figure out what I want to do with my life because it doesn’t seem like I am going to die anytime soon. And before you know it, I will be the age he was when he passed, then I will live a lifespan longer than his. I will one day look in the mirror and appear older than he ever did in his life.

I have the gift of still having my mom. But one of the hardest parts for me was seeing her pain at losing him, a man she describes as her best friend. I see my partner in much the same way and I have recurring nightmares in which my partner disappears and I wake up with clenched fists and a clenched jaw in excruciating physical pain, aching all over.

I get into conversations with people and when I meet another person who lost a parent as a child, I feel like I’ve found a unicorn. You both know what it’s like and most people won’t know that about you until they know you really well and even then, many people don’t know what to do with the information, so you often don’t share it or minimise the experience of it.

I’ve also noticed there are jokes that I can make in front of others who are bereaved that I cannot make in front of people who are not. It is quite shocking or even offensive for some people to hear a joke about death or about a dead person, but I love nothing more than the laughter of a bereaved person because you know they know that the person who is gone would’ve loved the joke, too. They get it. And that, for a moment, brings them back.

The other hard part is that I walk through the anniversary of his death feeling like it should be a national holiday, wanting to commemorate his life somehow, but I am too busy carrying on with my life and the demands made of me to do so.

On the phone with my partner at the end of the day yesterday, I lamented the fact that I was having such a busy day that I hadn’t managed to find even a few minutes to just sit and think of him. But my partner gave me the most beautiful gift. He simply asked, “Is there something we can do right now for just a few minutes?” And so he sat with me while we listened to “Blackbird” by the Beatles, my dad’s favourite band and I believe it was his favourite song. I cried. And my partner just sat with me; he didn’t feel the need to stop my tears and I didn’t feel the need to pretend that it didn’t matter to me; he just sat with me in my grief and I was so so grateful to him for it.

If we allowed ourselves the ritual of simply acknowledging what has passed from our lives (whether a person, a romance, a job, a home, a lifestyle, a friend), I believe we would be more able to celebrate what we do have and it we would make more intentional decisions about what we want the future to hold.

I can start by being more intentional about commemorating him and that means planning for the 27th anniversary of his passing. If anyone wants to join me for a dead dad/parent party, let me know.