Joy
I took this picture with my dad four years ago today.
It was the last photo we ever took together, and it was the last time I ever saw him alive.
We were at my old high school, walking the campus. I had forgotten how beautiful it was. Like most teenagers, I took it for granted when I was there, but on this crisp, fall morning, I stopped to appreciate the mountains peeking out from above the horizon and the sun filtering its light through the tree branches. My dad and I wandered down the pebble-paved path toward the soccer fields where my brother and sister used to play on the weekends. We were killing time, waiting for my sister to finish swimming laps in the indoor pool. It was a beautiful day in New York, and I was so happy to be walking with my dad. We stopped in front of the Sept. 11 Memorial by the soccer fields, both lost in our own thoughts. Nearly every school and park in Orange County had erected some sort of memorial after 9/11 because so many from our community died that day. We found random Blue Jay feathers near the memorial, and I tucked one into the pocket of my sweatshirt. I asked my dad to take a selfie with me, which was common. I always take pictures.
My family has always rolled their eyes and grumbled when I asked for just one more picture, and it has always, inevitably, turned into a dozen or so more. I have more than 20,000 photos on my phone, but I haven’t looked at pictures from that trip in four years. I couldn’t. It hurt too much.
My dad died 15 days after I took this photo. He died quickly and alone in his home, of a heart attack. The last text I ever received from him was at 12:38 p.m. on Nov. 3. My son had mailed him all of the chocolate tootsie roll pops he scored while trick-or-treating a few days earlier and my dad was thankful. I still have that text, “Thanks for the tootsie roll pops! Luv u all!”
Three days after I received that text, I was back on a flight to New York to plan my dad’s funeral. The brightly colored leaves had all fallen, replaced with dead, brown crunchy leaves that the wind occasionally blew into a store when anyone opened the door. It was sad.
My brother, sister and I plodded through the week of preparations, each checking off boxes on our own To Do lists. I wrote the obituary and the eulogy and gathered photos for the service. We met florists, funeral home planners, estate lawyers. We were all lost in our own grief. All of us grieving differently. But together. We had a service my dad would have loved with all the people who loved him. And after that week, we all went home, back to our lives. My sister to Maryland. My brother to Boston. Me back to Louisiana. I made a pact with myself that I would ride the wave of grief as authentically as I could and not question or fight where those waves led me.
I was prepared for the sadness. I understood the loneliness of sadness. I watched my husband mourn the loss of both of his parents. I knew I could weather the sadness. I didn’t have any regrets with my dad. He knew how much I loved him. I knew how much he loved me. I was prepared to be in control of my own sadness. Own the recklessness of it. Feel the uncomfortableness of it. What I was not prepared for was the despair. In the weeks following my dad’s death, I felt exposed and raw. I couldn’t swallow. I had a golf-ball size lump in my throat all the time. I cried all of the time. I hid. His gray hooded sweatshirt swallowed me up when I went for walks, and I lived in his Cabela’s black down vest. It was a cold winter down here. And I was thankful to be bundled up all of the time. I slept more than I didn’t, comforted by the 8-to-10-hour break in reality. I slogged through the daily tasks of my life, putting on a brave face for my husband and kids, under the armor of my dad’s sweatshirt. I gave myself a year to feel sad, and I felt it. Sadness settled into my daily routine and it was a familiar companion, but the despair, anger and resentment that followed stayed longer than welcome.
I once read a quote on a friend’s social media feed that said, “Hurt people hurt people. If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.” And boy did I bleed all over people. Strangers at Costco who parked their shopping carts in the middle of aisles. Acquaintances who couldn’t remember my son’s name. Friends who didn’t acknowledge my dad’s death. My mom. My brother. Myself. When the anger tasted too bitter, took over too much, I built a wall around me. I used comedy as a crutch and sarcasm as my staff. It gave my days purpose, feeling like my worth was a direct result of how many tasks I completed. I filled my days with so much work, taking on multiple clients, saying yes to everything that I barricaded sadness and despair from my heart. I ran on anger and righteousness, triggered by apathy and eliteness. I became overly worried about the underdogs and overly judgmental of those in power. I channeled empathy but only for those who I felt deserved it. I divided people into two different groups, and only two, in my very dualistic way of thinking, those who were good and those who were bad. Those who have and those who have not. I was determined to fight for those who could not fight for themselves. My path seemed a lot clearer. A lot easier. Despair left. Sadness wasn’t too far behind. I felt energized, motivated, and really pissed off all the time. I was the Roy Kent of my house.
But what I didn’t notice at the time was that my joy left too. In an effort to numb the sadness that wanted to pop in every now and then, I numbed the happiness, too. I just learned a term that was transformative for me. Brené Brown says “Foreboding Joy” is being afraid to enjoy and celebrate happiness in your life because you’re always afraid the other shoe will inevitably drop. When I read that in one of her books, I felt more exposed than ever, like she had just talked directly to me in those pages. I had been doing this for years. I am so afraid to enjoy a moment of joy because I feel like it will be taken from me so I’m constantly getting ready for something bad to happen. Expect the worst, hope for the best, has been my mantra for a long time.
Brown says without gratitude, there is no joy. And that thought paralyzed me and rejuvenated me at the same time. I realized I could do it. I could feel joy again by listing and naming the things and people I was grateful for. I loved making lists, had a ton of gratitude and have always found it easy to be thankful. I just needed to name it. So I shifted my brain from thinking about the scary things that could happen to focusing on the moments I cherished. I began to get out of bed in the morning and shuffle my way to the kitchen to make school lunches, thankful for each step. When my kids argued, I stopped and thought about what I should be grateful for. Their voices. Their health. Their ability to debate. Mowing the yard became less of a chore when I noticed the breeze that occasionally cooled me off and the birds that chirped every few minutes. I sat in the sunlight with my 14-year-old dog, grateful that she let me pet the back of her neck. I let myself feel that small moment of joy, grateful that my sweet and aging girl was still here and wagging her tail and accepting love.
I took my phone out this morning and swiped through the last four years, settling on this photo. There was nothing extraordinary that happened that day. We took a walk around my old high school and talked, and I made him take a picture. And then I hid it from myself for four years so I wouldn’t remember. Wouldn’t be sad. Wouldn’t feel. But I was grateful for that time with my dad.
It’s a vulnerable place to be, when you allow yourself to feel pain and joy at the same time. But I did just that. I am thankful that we had that time together and I am so incredibly sad that he is gone. But I’m not going to numb every minute of happiness that comes my way just like I’m not going to numb the sadness.
So if hurt people, hurt people, then maybe, just maybe, healed people can help heal people.
October 21, 2021