‘I’d waited 18 years for this moment’: How I finally found help in handling grief

I was wandering around a park with an acquaintance the other day, when he casually mentioned that he’d lost the power of speech when his father died. My heart lurched forward.

“I could speak to them on the phone,” he said, of friends and family, “but when I’d see them in person …” His voice trailed off, and he gestured with his hand away from his throat.

“Why?” I asked.

“Shock,” he said, with a small smile. He needed therapy to learn how to utter words again in the presence of other people.

I had waited 18 years, since my own father died at 58 of brain cancer, for this moment. To speak plainly about what losing a parent does to you.

Nobody used to talk much about death and grieving. So, whenever I’d glimpse a middle-aged man with my late father’s lumbering gait – like a grocery store owner walking the shop’s aisles cradling a stack of ungainly tomato tins in his arms – I’d have to sit down and jam the palms of my hands into my eyes.

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My father, David Morris, struggled to find his place in the world. He did fantastic drawings; the gently swooping neck of his swiftly sketched brontosaurus, tossed off on the back of a restaurant paper placemat, hinted at a river of subterranean creativity he wasn’t able to express in everyday life.

Anxiety and depression, and a tendency to bristle at his co-workers, pushed him from job to job. He worked, variously, as a security guard, draftsman, computer technician and amateur Canadian military historian before becoming, at 56, a teacher’s aide in a Toronto high school.

My dad, who’d dropped out of high school before later graduating as a mature-age student, became giddy with joy. “No kidding!” he emailed me in 2003, a year before his death. “Me, a former mathematical ‘bonehead’ is providing a positive touch in a mathematics class.” His pride leapt off the screen.

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He was the one who fretted about who drove me home at night – even when I lived more than 15,000 kilometres away. I, too, have long coped with anxiety, and struggled to find where I belonged. Shortly after he died, I remember walking towards my office and stopping, frozen, in the doorway. That cocoon of care was gone. Forever.

How is one meant to live with great loss? In my case, I did what any type A personality would do. I researched the crap out of it. I’d nod vigorously to myself, in my bedroom, while scrolling through Instagram and reading quotes about grieving. Like this one by Canadian author Saul Bellow: “Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces, down to the last glassy splinter.”

I took perverse pride in what my grief gave me. I was an aristocrat of pain.

And did you know, I’d all but pant to my husband while we got ready for bed, that Stephen Colbert’s father and two brothers died in a plane crash when he was 10? That he once said the experience delivered him the “gift” of being able to love those in his life more deeply? I took perverse pride in what my grief gave me. I was an aristocrat of pain.

Now, finally, stories about loss are coming out of the conversational wilderness. People regularly tweet about losing friends and family. One of the buzziest new podcasts is All There Is with Anderson Cooper, in which Cooper, a CNN host and son of the late fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt, talks with guests about grief, both his and their own. “It’s this thirst that everyone has, and no one’s pouring water for anybody,” says Stephen Colbert in one episode.

I all but smacked my forehead. Oh, this feeling is normal. I’m not alone. It was a fitting discovery, given my father taught me to revere the practical. “Be a plumber or a baker,” he’d often say. “The world will always need them.” And, my personal favourite: “Never get a tattoo where a judge can see it.”

It used to be that, when it came to coping with the loss of my father, I was like John D. Rockefeller, who, when asked by a reporter, “How much money is enough?” , responded: “Just a little bit more.” I was the same with solace for my dad. No matter what my wonderful friends or patient husband said, it was never enough.

I came to realise that what I needed was to hear from people who, like me, were navigating the storm of parental death. I could never have guessed it would be strangers on Twitter and podcasts that would help ease my loneliness. It is their stories that made me feel held. Which is all I’ve ever really wanted.

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