Grief and how I dealt with it

Not well. I’m 99.98% sure I was depressed and dealt with my grief by self-medicating on hours upon hours of K-dramas. Yes, you read that right. I binge-watched K-dramas for weeks.

There was a comfort I got from the predictability of K-dramas, something that I so desperately yearned for amidst the chaos in my life following my dad's sudden death. In those K-dramas I was guaranteed a happy ending, even if the beginning or the middle was rife with the heroine’s unfair treatment, manipulative parents, relatives or ‘friends,’ nefarious characters, traumatic events and love triangles.

It wasn’t just the comfort I garnered from the predictable formulaic love stories that had me hooked but it was the dopamine hits I got from watching these stories reach their climax and finally their feel good romantic endings. In an effort to numb the pain and ‘feel good’ I resorted to high and frequent doses of dopamine hits courtesy of Netflix’s smorgasbord of K-dramas. The highs never lasted very long but I didn't have the tools or the willpower to stop. So I kept chasing the dopamine to the temporary detriment of my sleep and relationships.

I barely left the house and figuratively buried my head in the sand like an ostrich. It didn’t help that whenever I did leave the house, or even when I didn’t, some well-meaning people would tell me that I had to move on and that my dad would want me to do x, y and z instead of what I was currently doing. So the deeper I buried my head in the sand.

I also shaved my head. It was the only outlet I had to express my overwhelming grief. “You have to be strong,” I was told and seeing my YeYa (Chinese for paternal grandfather) fall apart for the first time in my entire life I knew I couldn’t fall apart too. There was no one else left to pick up the pieces. So I shaved my head. I shaved my head so that I could leave a tangible piece of myself in the coffin with my papa to keep him company and not leave him alone in there, I shaved my head so that I could mourn without crying, I shaved my head because in a way it reflected my internal state and I shaved my head because it was the beginning of my bargaining phase in the grief cycle.

Hair is really important in the Gilbertese culture which is my maternal heritage. It is the epitome of a woman’s beauty and the longer and thicker the woman’s hair the more beautiful she is. It is a source of power to be protected. You are never to leave even a strand of your hair abandoned lest someone were to pick it up and use it to harm you through black magic. So I bargained with my hair. “God, I know my hair will grow back and I’ll be pretty again but if you give me back my papa then you don’t have to give me back my hair and I’ll happily be ugly forever. I just want him back.” I bargained with my long-held desire for a family of my own. “God if you give me back my papa and put my family back together then I don’t need my own family in the future. I’m happy with the one I have now. But please, it’s not complete without him. Please just give him back.”

The thing is, that’s not how life or death works. Life goes on whether I like it or not, and whether I’m ready or not. It’s a hard pill to swallow because it feels like when something that catastrophic happens surely the whole world should stop, no? But alas it does not.

I found that taking life moment by moment made it more bearable than thinking I had to make it through another hour, another day, week, month, year or worse still the rest of my life. At that point in time it was impossible to think about living the rest of my life without my dad in it. I knew I had to though. So moment by moment it was.

Slowly those individual moments became an hour, a day, a week, a month and then a year then two. The pain, though not as palpable and stark as it once was, still lingers. Like pins and needles in my legs after I’ve been sitting for too long but that never really goes away. However, as the rest of my life stretches before me now, it’s not as unimaginable to live it as I once thought.

I did not get here on my own though. I am extremely blessed with the most faith-filled and strong mum in the entire world. Her unwavering faith has been a great model to try to emulate and astonishing to witness. She has been a pillar of strength for me, my siblings and my YeYa. There’s also been the army of prayer warriors that have covered myself and my family in prayers; extended family, friends, our priest friends and their religious communities, religious Sisters, and our Archbishop. Not only have they prayed for us but they’ve made concerted efforts to reach out and let me know that they are watching out for me, that they’re there if I need them, and listened and counselled me as well.

“faith filled and strong mum”

“army of prayer warriors”

Although we would like to think that grief eventually goes away the truth is, I think, it never does. My grief now feels different than it did in the immediate aftermath of my NenNen (Chinese for paternal grandmother) and dad’s death but it IS still there. That is not to say that all of us who are grieving need to descend into helplessness because the grief will never go away. But it’s a reminder to not feel or think that you’re weak or crazy for NOT being ‘over it’ yet.

The way that we love them and the way that they love us cannot but leave an everlasting imprint on us forever. Does that mean we walk around in black forever? No, of course not. It means we miss them and wish they were with us but we continue living. So live with love and intentionality because the real tragedy is a life not lived to its full potential.