My dad’s death made me the person I am today

My dad died when I was 14. There are days when I still feel like I am suffocating, like I am screaming and no one can hear me. To talk about him–both his ugly and beautiful parts– is hard. It hurts to talk about his life in past tense, to solidify the fact that he was happy, he had lived. He was here and now, he is gone.

It was a normal Sunday morning then, when it happened, but now, as the date rolls by on the calendar each year, I am haunted. To lose a parent so young, to not even get the chance to know them as more than a parent and instead as an actual human being is devastating. I have so many “what ifs” swirling in my head that I cannot keep them quiet at night. What if I had told him I loved him more often? What if I had tried to get along better with him? What if he was still here today?

Now I know where my crazy hair comes from!

Thrown into adulthood, I learned rather quickly that life is cruel– unfair even– and frankly cares little for individual lives. Somehow I felt like my dad’s death was punishment, and learning to live without him is what has made me the person I am today.

I am ugly. I have a growling, ferocious temper. I push people away in fear of losing them, too. I do it all because it is easier, less damage to push those who love and care about me away then to suffer through losing them too. Whenever I cry, I feel as though I have failed. That I am weak and should just get over it already.

The truth is, four years later, I am still grieving. I try to keep my tears and scars hidden in fear of being labeled as “damaged,” but that does not mean they are not there. I have learned slowly, painfully, that crying is not a sign of weakness. It does not make you any less of a person to open up to the ones who will listen, to show them that sometimes, you simply are not okay.

I vividly remember the day of the funeral, the day I looked down upon him for the last time. His fingers were cold but still his hands, huge enough to belong to a giant, rough and callused from years spent working and creating with them. His complexion was frosted blue and gray but I still recognized him. He was buttoned in the shirt I had insisted he wore, glasses perched atop his nose as they always were, yet he was not there. Gone. Just like that.

Losing my dad at such a young age has made me the person I am today but it does not define who I am. I am ugly, but also beautiful. Brave. In the mirror, I see his curly hair spilling down crazily from my own head, I see his chocolate brown eyes. I see his hands as my own, hands that just like him, aspire to create, work, build, change. I see his sense of humor every time I make my friends laugh, and I see his temper every time I scream. My dad is with me. His presence and soul have never wavered from my side.

My birthday tradition for him.

Two summers ago, I learned one of the most important lessons in my life. The night was black, the kind of black where you can put your hand up to your face and if you didn’t remain conscious of it, you could forget about it altogether. Flick. “What?” Flick. “I almost had it.” Flick. My mom clicked her BIC lighter, doing everything in her power to shield the flame from the unsympathetic wind. We were trying to light a couple of Chinese lanterns, flimsy, underwhelming pieces of tissue paper hastily glued to a wire frame. The lanterns crinkled under my fingers and I worried they would disintegrate into nothing when I needed them to be everything. The blue lantern was mine. It was his.

That night, I tried everything to shove that lantern into the sky, to send it floating away but it was stubborn. He was stubborn. Then, when I was least expecting it, the wind came and took my lantern away. He was taken away. I ran to my mom, of her familiar smell of hairspray and cigarettes and buried my face in her chest. “That lantern was for Daddy. He sees us. He has to.” She looked at me silently slipping into a puddle of tears and I knew in that moment she was thinking the same thing. We stood on the beach for minutes, hours maybe and followed the blue lantern and its light into the black sky. It was then that I willed my struggles and pain onto the lantern, and as it lifted, so did I. I was lightened. I was free.

The night of setting out lanterns free.

The thing about losing a loved one is that it often comes with no warning, no way to physically prepare for the damage it can cause. But I believe it is in moments of tragedy and heartache that the warriors surface and that any pain, no matter how sharp or deep, is capable of being overcome. I am a stronger individual due to the experience I have been through. Although I would never consider myself thankful for the lessons I have learned in the wake of my father’s death, I would never leave them unacknowledged. From him, I have learned to take my fears and overcome them. I have learned to love fearlessly and deeply every single person I meet. I have learned kindness, sympathy and most importantly, the power of letting go. I have gained strength.

That night on the beach with my mom, we watched the lantern float and flicker until eventually, it faded into the black of the moonlit sky.

But for me, I like to believe that his lantern’s light still burns today. Somewhere, his lantern, his soul, is floating in the wind just hidden beneath the white of the clouds. Although I cannot see it, I know it is there. I feel it. I feel him.

Graduation day I kept him in my heart and his picture in my pocket as I walked the stage for my diploma.