The most profound memory I hold of my father’s battle with cancer is a silent one. It unfolds in a dimly lit, curtained room adjacent to the emergency ward, a space where my father and I were alone. The specifics of why we were there have faded, but it involved a complication stemming from his colon cancer. This insidious disease seemed to evolve with alarming speed, shifting its diagnosis and staging with each new medical opinion. One moment it was stage 1, the next stage 4, a dizzying oscillation that left us perpetually uncertain. Treatments like chemotherapy, radiation, and an eight-hour surgery would offer temporary reprieve, a fleeting sense of normalcy, only for the cancer to resurface, drastically shortening his remaining time. What had been weeks or months dwindled to mere days.
It was late at night in that hospital room, and my father was unconscious. There was an unsettling intimacy in watching him sleep, his face devoid of expression in the thin hospital gown. I was 22, and had maintained an almost unnatural calm since his diagnosis less than a year prior. This composure had become a necessity. As I watched his chest rise and fall, I began to synchronize my own breathing with his. In that hushed hospital environment, we shared a silent communion, our lungs and heartbeats pulsing in unison. I was acutely aware that his breaths were finite, and that this profound stillness, this shared silence, might never be replicated.
My father passed away on July 12, 2017, precisely one year after receiving his diagnosis. The day was marked by a somber, intermittent rain, a series of scattered thunderstorms. He died at home, in the very same couch where we had shared countless hours watching hockey and HGTV, and indulging in nachos with only cheese as a topping. The gentle summer air drifted in through the open screen door, leading to the backyard, a deliberate choice he had made so that, as he put it, “I’ll have somewhere to go.”
He chose medically assisted death, and in a different context, I could elaborate extensively on its profound significance for him and for our family. For the purpose of this account, it suffices to say that this choice allowed him to depart while still retaining a semblance of his own identity, a blessing we deeply cherished.
The Aftermath: Navigating Grief and the Unspoken
In the hours preceding the doctor’s arrival, my mind was a tempest of unexpressed anxiety, a surge of pent-up panic that flared into hyper-focused intensity. I yearned to find something profound or poetic to say, a final utterance worthy of my last opportunity to speak with my father. Yet, no words came. I was convinced that in the years to come, there would be a multitude of things I’d want to tell him – news of a proposal, advice on friendships, insights on writing projects, or updates on career advancements. These future conversations, however, were now irrevocably lost, stolen by the future we were being denied.
What I recall most vividly from the days, weeks, and months that followed was an overwhelming compulsion to speak about him, rather than to him. This was compounded by a paralyzing inability to articulate my feelings, to find the right words or the appropriate opening. My thoughts and emotions would erupt in a chaotic jumble, at inopportune moments, leaving me flushed with shame or hollow and isolated.
“My dad would know the answer to this,” I blurted out during an editorial meeting a few months after his passing. “But I can’t ask him.” My attempt at levity fell flat, sucking the air out of the room. A colleague cleared his throat, assuring me he would find the answer. Beneath the table, I dug my nails into my skin, the sting a sharp reminder of my regret, wishing I could retract every syllable.
The world had transformed into an alien landscape, saturated with reminders of a love that now inflicted pain. I was struck by the pervasive presence of my father, woven into the fabric of everyday life – in Neil Young songs, in overcooked french fries, in apple orchards, and at photography exhibits. When he was alive, he hadn’t felt so omnipresent, yet now, every step I took was met with a fragment of his memory, a pang of loss. Grief had become an intrinsic part of my being, my daily existence, and to refrain from speaking of it felt like withholding essential context from everyone I encountered – family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers. My unspoken plea was, “My dad just died. Please acknowledge it.”
However, those around me often appeared as lost as I was, unsure how to navigate this new reality, regardless of whether they had known him. Occasionally, their attempts at comfort provided solace: a friend who patiently listened during a walk around the funeral home, or a family friend who shared anecdotes from my father’s youth, offered brief respites, moments to surface and breathe amidst the overwhelming tide of grief. At other times, however, individuals were so consumed by their own discomfort with death, or so eager to “fix” my pain, that their interactions became prescriptive (“You’ll feel normal again in two years,” a co-worker declared with unsettling certainty) or presumptuously intrusive.
Navigating the Language of Loss
Several phrases recurred with unsettling frequency:
- “I’m so sorry.”
- “Your poor mother.”
- “If there’s anything I can do…”
Many of these condolences, though well-intentioned, simply washed over me, adding to an ever-growing pile of platitudes. Others, however, lodged themselves beneath my skin, causing a deeper ache.
One such phrase was: “I know exactly what you’re going through.”
Equally impactful was this declaration: “YOU WILL NEVER, EVER GET OVER IT.”
I was taken aback by the number of people who chose precisely those words. “You never get over something this big,” someone remarked at the funeral. Her face was unfamiliar, yet she, like everyone present, seemed to know me, perhaps through photographs from my father’s office, his wallet, or shared emails. “You’re so young.” I numbly accepted her embrace, the scent of her perfume a stark reminder of her unfamiliarity. Her words pierced me like a blade.
The sentiment, no doubt, was meant to convey that my sorrow was valid, the enormity of my loss undeniable. But, I reflected, “I’m not sure that’s a sufficient justification for saying it.” While the intention may have been comfort, the phrasing itself felt like a condemnation. In the context of those words – “You never get over something this big” – I was irrevocably broken, a victim of circumstances beyond my control.
“I understand that I’m young,” I wrote in my journal a few weeks later. “I understand that it’s tempting to try and map it all out for me. But something about it feels so counterintuitive to what my dad wanted. His last piece of advice was to live a good life and make him proud. How can I possibly do that if I’m permanently damaged? If even my moments of strength are, as people keep telling me, ‘being strong for my mother’?”
Others attempted to empathize with the protracted illness, the slow, agonizing journey we had endured. More than one person suggested that a different kind of death – swift and unexpected, perhaps violent but undeniably quick – might have been preferable. “A car accident would have been over in a second,” a friend of a friend mused over drinks in a dimly lit apartment. “You wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this.”
“Right,” I managed, taking a swig of overly sweet wine, attempting to quell any obligation to respond further, while he launched into a critique of the healthcare system.
The Nuances of Grief and the Shared Human Experience
I am not an ardent advocate for the cancer experience. The year of hospital visits, extensive surgeries, and the slow physical decline took an immense toll. Yet, I felt then, and continue to feel now, that the manner of one’s grief is less significant than the grief itself. Whether it manifests as a slowly dripping faucet or a torrential downpour, the outcome is the same: the loss of a loved one. No amount of forewarning is sufficient for a true goodbye, and no suddenness can diminish the overwhelming weight of sorrow.
Still, as had become my habit, I remained silent. Picking at the cracked vinyl of the bar stool, I summoned my dwindling energy and strove for charity: he meant no cruelty or thoughtlessness. Despite its clumsy execution, this was a genuine, albeit misguided, attempt at commiseration.
Ultimately, these exchanges, along with my own fumbling attempts at communication, underscored a profound truth: loss, one of life’s most ubiquitous experiences, is something we collectively struggle to articulate, whether it’s our own or someone else’s. Consequently, the temptation to avoid the conversation can be overwhelming. After all, words can only carry us so far.
A part of me truly believes that the answers to grief, if they exist at all, cannot be found in others. Solitude is essential; one must piece oneself back together without external input. I did not cry at the funeral, surrounded by a multitude of family and friends, but I can’t recall the number of times tears streamed down my face during my solitary drives to work. Those commutes, virtually my only private moments during those years, became a form of communion with my grief, a space where the pervasive sorrow could exert its demands.
However, on those same drives, trapped in the solitude of my own thoughts, I began to engage in reckless behavior: cutting off much larger vehicles, closing my eyes for brief moments to test the limits of fate. Life felt as though it had contracted. I envisioned continuing this cycle – driving, crying, working, and sleeping too little – for years that would pass in the blink of an eye, only to face the eventual loss of my mother, aunts, sister, and friends. Life, it seemed, would be a flat expanse of mounting pain, culminating in nothingness.
“The day-to-day is terrifyingly exhausting,” I noted in my journal. “Numbing. It feels like I’m sleeping and can’t claw my way awake. I want to feel like I have a personality again, in control again, but I’m disappearing into this crisis and I don’t know how to fix any of it.”
I felt connected to the living world only in fleeting flashes, in those rare moments when I had the opportunity to acknowledge what had transpired. I was drowning, and each conversation about my loss was a desperate gasp for air. These exchanges couldn’t pull me to shore, but they could sustain me for a little longer. Even the most awkward of these conversations, even the most hurtful, allowed me to release some of the overwhelming wave of suffocating emotions that churned within me.
Finding Connection Through Shared Vulnerability
My intention in sharing these experiences is not to admonish, shame, or gossip. While some individuals seemed solely interested in sensational details or eager to conclude the encounter and move on, the vast majority bravely navigated this difficult territory with me because they recognized the devastation and genuinely wished to help me through it. They were concerned about me, and therefore, they attempted to do what I was struggling with: talk about it. And regardless of my complex feelings about their choice of words, I remain grateful for their efforts.
Looking back on those countless small moments, it’s clear that many of them were not truly about me. The words spoken often stemmed from the speakers’ own experiences with loss. When they told me I was being strong for someone else, or that this sorrow would follow me for the rest of my life, or that a quicker death might have been preferable, I interpreted it as an attempt to express their own grief, their own trauma, their own remembered pain. These were echoes of someone else’s strength or lack thereof; someone else’s life spent mourning; someone else’s arduous journey toward an end. They were attempts to tell a different story, and to derive some meaning from it by making it relevant to my situation.
Some individuals stated this directly, transitioning seamlessly from advice or condolences to narratives about the deaths that had impacted them – often, the deaths of their own parents. Others left it unsaid, but the specificity of their advice, their comfort in discussing the taboo subjects of grief and death, radiated an undeniable familiarity.
“Give yourself a creative project,” an old writing teacher advised me during those hazy early months after my father’s passing. “Something that gets you out of the house, around other people.”
I conceptualize grief as water: an oceanic swell of emotion and memory, demanding every fiber of my being and threatening to tear me apart from within. Every crying spell, journal entry, and conversation acts as a turned-on faucet, offering a chance to alleviate that pressure incrementally until I have enough space to breathe again. It is too much to expel all at once, yet equally impossible to hold inside indefinitely. And while I understand that grief is a deeply personal experience, shaped uniquely by each individual’s trauma, I must assume that this pressure is a common human burden.
Is it any wonder, then, that we gravitate towards each other when death enters the conversation? The opportunity to discuss someone else’s grief also presents a chance to air our own, to release some of the pressure we still carry. While this impulse may not make us the most adept confidants, it is undeniably human and, at times, necessary.
It is possible, I suppose, that someone somewhere possesses the definitive answer to the question, “How do you talk to someone who is grieving?” But that person is certainly not me. Several people I love are currently navigating losses as profound as mine was – the loss of parents, partners, children – and I am far from confident that I am offering the right words. I only know that attempting to connect is paramount. So, I strive to listen first, to ask gentle questions, and to make no assumptions. Yet, at times, I inadvertently inject too much of myself into the conversation. A part of me is still seeking opportunities to turn on the faucet, to grant my heart what it demands.
The Enduring Presence and the Path Forward
I remain eager to talk about my father whenever the opportunity arises. I want to share how he cultivated flowers in our backyard, how I still hear his voice identifying plants and birds. I want to recount how he meticulously read everything I wrote, even my excessively long first novel, and how we listened to music together after dinner whenever possible. I want to describe his valiant efforts to parent me even from his hospital bed: insisting I rest when exhausted, showing me where the nurses kept the Popsicles. I want to convey that for at least two full years, I lost faith in the possibility of happiness.
Am I ruined, as I feared I would be? Will I, as I was told, “never, ever get over it?” Perhaps. If the objective was to revert to a state of “normalcy” – to a world where this loss does not, in some fundamental way, define me – then I have undoubtedly failed. I never stood a chance. Like it or not, I am a different person now, with a new imperative: to talk about what happened.
I don’t know how to make this easier for anyone else. I’m not even sure how I will endure it when it happens to me again. I know that I will continue to seek out the right moments to turn on the faucet, to provide my heart with what it needs. And I know that, whether it feels comfortable or not, I will persist in creating space for others to openly mourn their own losses. None of us truly knows what we are doing, and this kind of dialogue is inherently fragile. I believe it is best to allow it to hurt.
Carly Midgley is a writer, freelance editor, and library program planner based near Toronto. When not writing, she can be found enjoying copious amounts of tea and dissecting books and video games. You can connect with her on Instagram @carlymidgleywrites or visit her website at carlymidgley.com.