Grieving My Own Path - Part 2. Running to his arms.

As we know, death is something that everyone who is living on this earth will experience, so as you can imagine a lot of opinions, mottos, phrases, cliques are used because there are no right or wrongs to say, but there is a lot to be said. A lot on repeat. The biggest clique I’ve probably been told is ‘you're so strong’. I didn’t say cliques were bad. I just think they sometimes can lack a real strength of meaning the more you hear them. Maybe its right, maybe I am strong. I guess I feel that this cliques is almost praising me to seem that I am coping, when I know its perfectly fine to be sad, cry, breakdown. In fact, I find I benefit more from doing so. I guess the difference maybe is that I don’t often want to cry in front of others. Not because I think it will reflect badly on others from myself, because I just don’t want to. No deeper meaning, I just don’t want to.

Again, as I said, everyone has a clique that will resonate with them. I think one that sticks to me is ‘you won’t get a grade for your grieving process’. If something works for me, then it’s doing it’s job correctly. I like to feel productive, useful, making a difference, impactful beyond me or the norm. After the funeral, I couldn’t help but still feel unsettled. Dad’s death was different from some, it was one that wasn’t meant to happen now. Therefore for me, he felt like a unfinished chapter of a book that was so wonderfully written and read by many, yet as a default ending of a sad funeral, made me feel there was one more thing I had to do for him.

I decided to fundraise money for MIND charity by doing a run every 3 hours for 3 miles for 33 hours non-stop (yes, I ran at 12am and 3 am!!). I raised far more than I ever expected. My final mile at 36 wasn’t just physically tough, but mentally I was carrying dad on my shoulders. I knew that I wouldn’t ever run like this again, not for dad’s memory, not to raise money for him. This was my final wave for him. To close his book and shelf his life in a much happier way. So it was a pretty teary mile. Most beautiful one too.

Doing this big fundraiser was neither right or wrong, it was what I wanted to do. Therefore it did it’s job. I can feel more comfortable in myself that dad has a better narrative, more fitting to the living person, rather than his passing away story.

I think grief, no matter what form it comes from, is feeling comfortable with the news of what is happening. Gaining the control back from something that is out of our control. I have found ways to cope with my mental health for many years now; I’ve gotten quite good at it. Grief, was something new for me to experience, yet the principles of managing anxiety or stress or depression can be applied the same. Which I know a great deal of how to do so. Turns out, gaining back a little bit of power however you do that, is a way to rationalise a loss. Making sense of non-sensicle things. Running makes sense to me. So I did lots of it. Not only did I feel good about myself, dad would have been happy for me. Because he wanted his children to feel good about themselves. He would has seen that every mile I ran, I was finding more and more comfortability with the pain and gaining ground from chaos. Running, the focus of rising money grind that control again.

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I’m not sure if I will write another chapter on my blog about grief. Maybe not about dad at least. The reason I ran was the close the gap. I ran. I stopped the watch and then I took off my trainers. I ran into dad’s arms for one last squeeze. The one thing I now know about grief; missing someone doesn’t go away. That is a fortunate hurtful emotion and yes, I will feel it. No it won’t change, but I will be okay feeling like that, because it is a truth that I loved what I had, my dad.