The Dead Dads Club

I went to a funeral today. My friend's husband's father died last Saturday and the service was today. To be honest, I had a rough morning. I felt anxious and was snippy with my husband and the kids. I also found myself very resentful of the fact that I was still on my nutritional cleanse, that I couldn't have a cup of coffee. All I wanted was a latte. Finally, in the late morning, I put it together that the fact that I was attending the funeral for a friend's father was affecting me, stirring up thoughts and emotions and memories in me. The odd thing was that I was not consciously missing my dad, or feeling grief, but it was tangling me up inside without my mind being aware of just what was happening.

The funeral was sad. Of course it was. It was also really beautiful. The man's four kids all spoke and they were just wonderful, their words laced with laughter and tears and palpable love and longing. The service brought me back, but somehow I remained pretty numb throughout it. Interestingly, my husband seemed more affected. When we had lunch together after, we talked and he admitted that the funeral was hard because it gave him a glimpse of what's to come. The reality is that we are entering an age where we will all lose parents at some point.

If I were drinking these days, I have no doubt that tonight would be a wine-soaked night. I wouldn't have planned this, no. I would have let the day slide by and then I would have poured a glass around 5 or 6. And then another. And another. I would have done this because this is what I have always done when anxious, when sad, when confused.

But tonight. I'm not going there. Instead, I am here. A step. In my mind, an important one.