Life as Amber knows it

I’m in an awesomely shit mood this week.

And I’m sorry to inform you, said shit mood is going to be sticking around for the next week or so.

I believe firmly we choose our state of mind. That our attitude can go a long way towards achieving results in our life. That we’re magnets in that we draw into our lives what we’re putting out there.

But there are always exceptions to rules. And this week, as well as next, I’m letting the shit mood, the depression, the hurt, and the pain have it’s way with me. It’s impossible to not do otherwise: my father’s birthday and the day he passed away are one week from each other.

This wave of grief is nothing new; in fact, most of the good people who had experienced the loss of a loved parent in my life warned me how this would be. That there would be times that missing my father would be a sweet nostalgia with smiles and a peace associated with it from having had such a great parent in my life. They also warned me there would be times that the grief would return in such a way that it would feel like the loss had just occurred.

I’ve always hated it when people told me I wouldn’t understand unless I went through something myself. I always felt like the person telling me that was patronizing. Three years after my father’s death, I’m now a person who uses that expression. I would never wish this type of grief on anyone, but until you have lost a parent, you have no concept. At age nineteen, my father’s mother passed away, and the grief was astounding. Still to this day I feel the loss of her. In my mid-twenties, my Uncle Richard passed after losing his battle to a brain tumor, and despite having known we were going to lose him, I actually lost my legs and slammed down on the tile floor of the Walgreen’s I was working at when I got the phone call he had passed. There have been other losses of people I held dear to my heart since those two, and they each affected me and hurt me.

I was not prepared for the loss of my father. I was not prepared for the loss, despite the fall he took on his birthday and having to make the tough decision with my younger brother to place our father in compassionate care. Even previous health scares with my father had done nothing to prepare me.

I received the telephone call from the hospital my father had passed at 1:03 a.m. on July 21, 2014. It was a Monday. I drove to the hospital, calling my brother on my way. And when my brother answered, his voice harsh from sleep, I told him our father had gone. “What? What?” he asked me, and my heart skipped a beat while I found the courage to repeat those words.

The grief would hit me hard at strange moments and not so strange moments over the next couple of months: when I finished writing his eulogy; when I took my oldest child’s hand to walk down the aisle at the beginning of the funeral; when the Knights of Columbus saluted him at the end of the funeral; when I came across a shoebox filled to the point of bursting with hotel soaps in it; when I tried to clean out the pantry in the kitchen and came across all the expired foods he couldn’t bear to part with. I’d get slammed with it when I achieved something, my children did something I’d call to tell him about and then have to remember he was no longer there.

Big moments, small moments, moments in between. Running my company in the black, hitting the best sellers list. Getting hired for jobs that furthered my career. Checking items off my bucket list. Seeing the 2014 World Series; seeing the 2015 MLB All Star Game. Interviewing famous people who I’d admired. Meeting in person famous people I admired. Losing my fear of public speaking, my fear of flying. Facing my fear of heights and not getting over it, but not backing away from the edge of Sandia Peak.

So many damn moments, so many damn experiences, and the most I can do is sit by his plaque in the mausoleum where he’s interred and talk to him. I can write a letter to him and save it on my computer. I can think he’s who I’m talking to when I’m praying. And sometimes, those things are enough. Sometimes I can look at the photo of us from my first wedding that sits on my desk, the photo of him, my oldest child and myself on my twenty-eigth birthday and smile and remember those moments. I can think back and remember how even in his final hours on this earth, we had a playful debate back and forth. I can remember how often he took time from work to sit with me in doctors offices or in hospitals when I was fifteen and very ill from Graves Disease. How once I became a teenager, every week without fail we’d go to dinner together and talk about what was new in my life. I can think of those things and remind myself that I was lucky: I had one good parent to guide me and be there and force me into learning how to bust my ass and work hard, and be grateful for the time I did get to spend with him (thirty-seven years).

Then there are weeks like this one, and the weeks in the lead up to this one. How just before Father’s Day, the hurt and pain of the loss creeps in. How I would give anything to have just another hour to talk to the man that raised me. How it gets closer to his birthday and closer to the day we lost him, and my throat feels tight and scratchy, my heart races, I can’t sleep that well, and I’m on the verge of tears. How I can’t seem to not count down in my mind (“It’s July 10… I had four more days with him before his fall in 2014 on his birthday…”) to the final moments of his life. How I go over everything he’s missed. How I remember how it would have been three more years I’d of had with him.

In ten days or so, I’ll pull out of this. But for now, I’m owning my emotions, I’m owning the grief that’s a part of my life. I’m opening up to people, telling them I’m hurting, telling them I’m struggling and anxious and hurting and could use a friend, because I am all those things right now. I’m letting the tears come when they come and letting them fall freely and not apologizing for this.

Because I had a father. And he wasn’t perfect. He was human, he made mistakes. But he was kind, he put his children first in all he did, he gave of his time and resources to those left fortunate. He taught me more about life by example rather than words.

And I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without having him for a father.

Amber Jerome~Norrgard