My Acceptance into the Dead Dads Club

The night my life changed and how my body remembers.

Nov 13, 2023

This November marks 10 years since my dad died. Most years this day doesn’t really affect me. Honestly, I’ve completely missed it and not even acknowledged it. I even had to text my brother while writing this to confirm the actual date. But something about a decade passing feels really big. This is a milestone to mark. Like how in the hell have ten years passed? What has even happened in the last decade - so much. And the thing that’s really pushing to the surface: It’s time to acknowledge this. It’s time to actually feel the grief for the first time in probably ten years.

So this essay is about losing a parent. Specifically, the retelling of the night I got the call that there had been a car accident, which then led to the passing of my dad. This reflecting and reliving feels necessary on my healing and grief journey right now. I don’t have much more of an explanation than that.

What I will offer is to take care of your heart.

You can save this for another time if it’s not calling to you right now. You’re not weird if you’re like “Heck yes I’m here for a death story!”. You’re totally allowed to pass on it entirely. You can read it, knowingly nod, and continue on with your day. Do what feels best for you. Regardless, I’m glad you’re here.

November 25th, 2013

There’s an 845 area code number flashing on my phone screen. Who from my hometown is calling me?

Answer this call.

The voice that resides in the space between my heart and gut is infrequent but makes herself known very clearly when necessary.

Pick up this call.

Ok heard. I answer with a weird professional tone to my voice and major inflection on the “Hello?”

It’s a boy I went to high school with. He’s a few years older than me and certainly a man now. He also happens to be a police officer. Perhaps a sheriff, or a trooper? IDK but he’s first on the scene of a car accident.

“There’s been an accident. Your dad was hit by a car. He’s being life-flighted to Albany.”

I stand there hunching over a little dresser I got off Craigslist. I didn’t bother unplugging my phone from the charger because I didn’t think this was going to be a call that needed my full attention.

The sound of high-school-boy-now-police-officer-man’s voice fades out and I’m intensely focused on the juxtaposition of my shabby-chic Craigslist find and the hard, modern concrete floor of my studio apartment.

“You still there, Emma?”

Huh. He knows my name. He was a few years older than me, but maybe played lacrosse with my brother?

I snap back. There’s panic but also detachment in my voice. I’m asking a lot of questions. Then I remember for whatever cosmic reason my brother is actually back home in New York. We both live in Tennessee and make the trip back upstate only a few times a year.

I tell him he needs to call my brother to give him all the correct details on where to be and when.

“I’ll take care of that for you. And I’m really sorry to be calling you with this news. I wanted to be the one to make the call so you’d hear a familiar voice and know that your dad is being taken of to the best of our abilities.”

Perks of a small town.

Brace for impact sister.

Damn, that voice is so clear. My throat tightens with tears. And despite what she’s trying to tell me I start pacing around frantically.

My boyfriend and I are scheduled to leave tomorrow morning to spend Thanksgiving in California with his family. My suitcase is open on the bed, pretty much packed. I notice the black Forever21 dress within the folds of a few other wardrobe essentials of my early 20s existence.

I think to myself: “Well that dress will be useful for a funeral.”

I try and communicate what the fuck is happening to my boyfriend while trying to simultaneously call my mom - she’s not answering - and call my brother - he’s eerily calm.

The next few moments unfold in a blur. I’m pacing back and forth in a flurry of deep breaths and somehow delegating to my steady, patient boyfriend to book flights to New York, the first one I can get on.

I call my mom at least six more times. Still no answer. What the fuck Carol?! This is obviously a distress call.

And then it happens. My phone lights up with my brother’s name and everything tunes out.

Slow down. Breathe.

I’m standing at the side of our bed now. Watching my phone buzz on a nightstand I got from TJ Maxx because it matched my Craigslist find. It’s also shockingly mismatched with the concrete floor, which over here has more veins and sealed-over cracks.

I shakily answer the phone. He delivers the news. Dad’s dead. My brother got to the hospital just before it happened and he was able to be there with him. We say nothing else. What else are we supposed to say?

The phone slips out of my hand and I slide down to the floor as if there’s a wall against my back. My mouth opens but nothing comes out. I’m screaming but there is no sound. I’m crying but there are no tears.

Time has actually stopped. I’m convinced of this. Nothing around me is tangible yet I’m surrounded by the biggest set of feelings I’ve ever felt. I can’t name any of them I just know they are here to swallow me.

Hold on. We’re going under.

Maybe my boyfriend comes over to me? Maybe I float in his direction? It’s unclear and anything is possible while I’m inside the tsunami of big feelings.

“My dad is dead. He died.” For real sobs now. “My dad is dead.”

I’m lying on our couch in the early hours of the morning. At some point, time started moving again but I’m not sure in what capacity. Sleep has not been possible for me.

My eyes are surrounded by that ever-specific post-cry puff. My nose is blocked with the never-ending amount of snot that didn’t make its way onto my face over the last few hours.

I’m numbly staring at my laptop screen, desperately trying to grab onto some form of control.

This is part of your story now.

That voice again. She’s so clear and I know she’s all-knowing, but damn she’s also annoying sometimes.

I roll my eyes at myself but then realize I can spin this higher-power message into what I need right now.

My mind begins to work in that protective way that it does when my nervous system is tapped out and my capacity to feel is drained.

Make a list! Yes. Lists are calming and I can write each item, one at a time. This I can control.

I make a list of all the people who need to know about why I’m about to fall off the face of the planet. My boss needs to know why I won’t be answering emails or doing any work for the next who knows how long. My childhood friends need to know why I’m abruptly coming home and to PS, look out for funeral arrangements. My yoga studio needs to know why my weekly class will need a sub for a to-be-determined amount of time.

My brain needs to keep making lists and writing draft emails and scrolling aimlessly and staying awake but not really being present to the traumatic, life-changing (and of course life-ending) event that has just occurred.

I stay awake until the sky starts to wake up. Now it’s time to head home.

I travel by myself because my boyfriend couldn’t get us on the same flight at such short notice. He will meet me there. And I finally got a hold of my mom.

She was at a Van Morrison concert in NYC and there was no service, hence her not answering. Another round of guttural sobs comes when we finally do connect.

Even though it’s her ex-husband of 20 years, she’s distraught for her children.

As I watch the sunrise over the runway at BNA I know I need music to get me through.

I remember there’s a session of songs sitting in my inbox. I know an honest, not-yet-published expression from a Nashville songwriter will certainly be some sort of liferaft to the tsunami-turned-unsteady waters happening inside my soul.

Perks of working in the music industry.

I’m drawn to Sober Sunrise immediately. I’m staring at the sunrise, so that’s obvious. But it also makes me think about the liquor-soaked demons my dad confronted. This life-long battle was new to me only a few years earlier. Functioning alcoholics can really function in life with those around them having no idea, especially when functioning for the sake of children.

The song isn’t exactly about what I’m currently experiencing and feeling but isn’t that the point of music? To invite us in, sometimes with a single word or rhyme, to experience the power of universal connection.

I really need to clear my mind for a little while. Take as long as it takes.

Four minutes and twenty-four seconds of three chords and the truth is on repeat until I touch down in New York for the funeral of my dad.

November 2nd, 2023

I’m leaving for a trip back to New York tomorrow morning. I’m not hearing the clear, knowing voice that resides in the space between my heart and gut. These days, it’s my physical body that speaks volumes any time I’m anticipating a trip back to the 845.

Over the last ten years, I’ve come to know physical pain as a manifestation of grief.

And that flares up any time I travel back to the place where I grew up. The same place where a car accident killed my dad.

My left eye twitches. My left shoulder (directly behind my heart, of course) radiates a searing hot pain that creeps up into my neck. And like clockwork, I don’t sleep the night before I travel to New York. I’m right back to that night, lying numb on the couch, unable to sleep. The body keeps the score.

Things have become more manageable with time. It took a few years but I finally started connecting the dots and simply just became aware of what I was feeling in my body.

Therapy has helped me talk it out. Physical therapy has helped me move it out. And writing like this, reliving it, has brought some peace and a few “Aha!” moments to things that have transpired over the last decade.

I’ve started to acknowledge, with the anticipation of this 10-year milestone, that I’ve kept a lot of my grief in. Quite frankly, I’ve ignored it.

Last year, on a solo trip back to New York I realized that about a week before I left I started to get weird. First of all, I was an asshole to those closest to me. My steady, patient boyfriend from 10 years ago is now my husband. His unwavering support and how he showed up for me that night in 2013 solidified my wanting him by my side for the long haul of marriage. Aka me not processing my grief and taking it out on him.

I also just started to turn inward. #HermitMode as I call it. And not in the way that’s like self-reflective and beneficial. But in the way of numbing and tuning out. Something would make me think of my dad, or my body would start hurting, and I’d be like “Nope. Don’t have time for this today. The big feelings need to go back down into the abyss for another time, another place.” Spoiler alert, I never carve out the other time and space for it to actually process through.

Upon arriving in New York on my solo trip last year, my mom had left her car for me at the airport so I could drive myself home. And on that drive I finally let myself feel. On the New York State Thruway, I sobbed my fucking face off. I said out loud over and over “I don’t want to hold it in anymore. I want to let it out.” The soundtrack this time was Taylor Swift. She is always there for me.

While that messy, snot-filled release was helpful, I’ve got 10 years’ worth of unsorted grief piled up inside. And I haven’t had a release that big since.

What seems to be most potent is the support and understanding from the Dead Dad’s Club.

For me, humor has been a part of my grief journey. When a friend sent me a text referencing “The DDC” I had to ask for an explanation because IDKWTF that is.

“Oh lol. The Dead Dad’s Club. Welcome! A shitty club to be a part of, but one filled with love and understanding.”

A good amount of my most important life-long friends have lost their dads (a few moms too) before the age of 35. It’s fucking horrendous, and it provides a dedicated group of people to lean on.

I can shoot a text with a single emoji or “I miss my dad today.” and it’s received with a simple reply of understood grief. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed.

Perks of trauma bonding.

Or I can text a full-blown novel about a wristwatch of my dad’s I found in a box of stuff I’ve refused to go through since he died. How I got that watch restored at a local jewelry store and how my dad would have loved how passionately the sweet elderly jeweler talked about the type of watch I’d brought in. “They don’t make ‘em like these anymore.”

I’m starting to understand and appreciate the act of being witnessed.

Sharing more about my dad as a person. Recounting random memories with detail. Expressing my sadness and longing about all I miss and all he’s missed. Probably why I’m writing publically about this. It helps to wade through the hole that’s been in me, tend to the deeper parts, and grow new life from that space.

I re-listened to Sober Sunrise for the first time in years as I was working on this piece. And what rings true today that wasn’t quite possible ten years ago is this:

I think my heart’s ready to fight through all the pain that I’ve been running from.

November 9th, 2023

I just left my therapist’s office. She rocks. Like truly I really appreciate her and what she’s helped me uncover. Our therapeutic relationship is new, only a few months old, and we’ve wasted no time getting elbows-deep in the emotional muck. I’m so grateful for that.

In my session this morning I talked about this piece and the process of writing about the night my dad died. As therapists do, she helped sort out the why behind it and find some clarity.

Having the agency to be the narrator and tell this story, versus it being a thing that happened to me, allows me to organize the events of it all. As mentioned above, control helps in chaotic, traumatic times so here I am again taking control, but in more of a healing way as opposed to a protective way.

The details that I remember, specifically the environment I was in (the dresser, the floor, the nightstand), became these access points to step back into the memory. They weren’t frightening or offputting, they were strangely comforting details that opened the door to the past so I could find peace in the present. It’s made the memory of a traumatic event way less overwhelming.

This has actually been more healing than I thought it would be. It’s given me the opportunity to remember the moment when my life changed, that there is a Before and an After. It’s as if I’ve been staring at a foggy mirror in a steamy bathroom and I gave myself permission to slide my hand across the glass. To see a clearer reflection.

The depth of this grief will never go away. And it’s going to forever evolve with time. While it’s taken me 10 years to get here, I can now see the strength and resilience that has been built over the last decade. The strength and resilience that I have right here, right now. I can sit here today and relive it, pain and all.

I think there will still be times when I intentionally avoid the big waves of grief. I think I’ll also have more love and understanding towards myself about all that. And if anything, I’ll have another few decades to uncover the next level of my soul that lives alongside grief.

I’m still here, and dare I say even stronger for it?

Yes, you’re strong. Yes, you’re ok.