Finding the universal and the unique in the death of my father

Russell Alexander Stewart, my father, died unexpectedly shortly before Christmas. He was 90, so I use the term "unexpectedly" not because he died, but because he wasn't ill the day he died, he wasn't suffering from a terminal illness.

He died having plans for things to do over the upcoming holiday. He'd even been preparing for our annual New Year's Day levee route by making sure his kilt and outfit were in order.

He also died at home in his bed during the night, and I, like I did every Tuesday, stayed overnight at his house. I found him that Wednesday morning.

It was apparent that he was awake when he'd died, and that he had suffered some sort of discomfort, hopefully for only seconds.

Grief, out of order

I'd heard a noise some time during the night, but it only half-awakened me, and not hearing anything subsequently, I fell immediately back to sleep. I believe that noise was my father dying, and that bothers me deeply.

My mother, Davida, died in 2015. I'm an only child, and with my father's death, I am left a 55-year-old orphan. I have no children. This is the end of this line of the Stewart and the MacEachern families.

I've experienced grief before, but each time it's a new sensation, coming with its own set of circumstances and showing itself in new and unwelcome ways. One of the things that has struck me about my current experience of grief is that it has been the most intense feeling possible and a feeling of nothing at all at the exact same time.

I have been passing through each of the stages of grief, but often within minutes of each other and in no discernible order.

I like it best when I am feeling acceptance.

Like floating in water

It seems next to impossible to accurately describe grief to someone who has yet to experience it. Grief is hard. No one wants to feel it, and it's rare to find anyone who wants to be around it. Yet, it's a universal experience. The price for loving someone, as it's been said.

What I can say with certainty, though, is that grief is most definitely its own entity, unlike anything else, that swoops in unexpectedly and completely disrupts your life until it's done with you.

I note that I'm dealing best with grief when I feel my father's presence in one way or another. I'm at my worst when I'm feeling his absence.

Years ago, when I asked a friend how she was doing after her father had died, she told me that it was like floating in water and that she had decided to go with the current, because fighting it made it worse. I'd always held on to that advice, because it made so much sense to me, and when it comes down to it, you have no choice but to feel what your grief wants you to.

Grief is the most tenacious thing you will encounter.

My husband and I are sorting through my father's belongings, deciding what to keep, what goes and who gets what. Each item that realistically has to leave the house feels like a betrayal. My father did an exceptional job of keeping my mother's belongings. He needed them to feel her presence. It's hard not to feel that in doing a different style of sorting that I am letting him down.

That, I guess, is all part of my process. I also think it's one of the emotions that makes up the complexity of grief, an experience of dichotomies, both universal and intensely individual.

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