Reaching for Eudaimonia

My father was the most rational person that I knew. He could help anyone pull themselves out of an emotional breakdown. He knew I was an over-thinker... a really destructive over-thinker. He would always pull me out when I would bury myself with the world.  He would ask me how I could take something so small and insignificant and somehow warp it into something that didn't resemble the original.  I didn't have an answer to this. I joked with him that my over-thinking could be helpful when planning a plot twist in one of my novels, but we both knew that it was a problem.   I wish he was here to give me advice. I am going through an emotional earthquake as of late. Yet, I know what he would tell me to do.  "Don't let anyone have that much control over your emotions, Kateleigh." I still hear his words in my head, although his face has started to fade. I haven't managed to figure out how to implement this life lesson. Sometimes I wonder if...

Dear Dad, You died a year ago today. The foggy recollection that this is no longer an approaching inevitability, but rather a fact that I need to accept is mind-numbingly painful. I still try to remember that day, the day you left us. Sometimes the memories seem hazy, but other times I see it in a monotonous pattern constantly on replay. A year ago it was sunny and unnaturally warm for the first day of December. It was a Sunday and I had come home straight after my weekend job at the little mom-and-pop café. When I got home you were dressed to do yard work. “How was work?” You asked. “Fine. Kind of a slow day, actually,” I replied. You smiled and gave me a hug. I was glad to be home. I had a test in Physics that coming Thursday and wanted to study as much as I could. Mom was cleaning the kitchen, preparing for dinner. You said that you wanted something spicy to eat. We planned on watching Masterpiece Theatre that night. “Are you going outside to work?...

My father was a little odd about buying things, specifically clothes. He never wore anything that had any labels or any other traces of a brand. He always said that wearing them was basically free advertising. He bought his clothes a little bit oversized. My father was over six feet tall and of average build. He said he didn't like clothes fitting too close. I knew that he didn't quite like it when I wore his sweaters, but they were cozy. When he died I slept for days in the same forest green fraying sweatshirt. I knew it looked like it swallowed me, but in a way I already thought that the world had swallowed me. Mom slept with his shirts rolled up and under her pillow for over a year. His clothes were the only articles that still smelled like him. When I wore them I still felt like he was there. When I wore them I felt safe. Giving away his clothing was really hard to do. I was sometimes afraid to walk into their closet because the clothes lingered there, like appari...

In the spring of 2015, Mom began to pack some of Howard's things away. She had kept all of his clothes and shoes in the same place for around a year and a half. "What if he needs them?" She would mumble this sometimes when I asked her if she needed help, even though we both knew he wasn't going to need them.  I remember the day she found a heavy grey metal box in the back of their closet.  Mom yelled my name, she sounded like she was panicked. I ran to her as fast as I could. It had reminded me of the way she screamed my name the day she found Howard in the woods.  When I found her she was sitting on the floor with a screw driver trying to open the box. It had a lock on it. She was trying different angles on it, sometimes hitting it hard on the hinges.  "What are you doing?" I asked her.  She stopped trying to pry it open and looked up at me with misty eyes.  "Have you seen this before?" She asked me.  I shook my h...

I have been reaching out to my old high school friends and some of my past relationships in hopes that they might shed some light on what I was like the first couple of years. Some bring up things that I didn’t even know happened. After the first week, one of my best friends since childhood took an entire week of school off because she didn’t want me to be alone. Our neighbors, who are more like family, told me that I couldn’t fall asleep without a lot of people around me.  Sleeping is probably the only thing I can recall.  I am still in the process of understanding who I was then because I genuinely believe it will heal some of the issues I deal with today.  I have become a worrier.  It is also sometimes quite difficult for me to open up to people I do not know. This used to be very different for me.  But the best one (in my opinion) is that I have anxiety about what I will do if something happens to the other people I care about and love de...

Dear Dad, Today marks 2 years since you died. I know that you might think it would be silly of me to write you like this, but at the same time I don’t really talk to anyone about what happened to you that day. In fact, I don’t really speak at all about it. Sometimes I wonder if something is wrong with me. I can feel everyone in the family wondering why I don’t talk about you. They wonder why I don’t cry.  But I don’t mind telling you that I am scared to. I’m scared if I go there, if I relive that day that I won’t be able to pull myself out of it. I remember what feeling nothing felt like. I remember what showing up and hiding my pain behind a façade to not upset anyone felt like.  I don't want to do that.  I don't want to not feel anything anymore.  Written: (12.1.15)

The first week after Howard died I lost around 10 pounds. My grandmother had moved in and was cooking for mom and me for almost every meal. If we ate it was only a couple of bites.  My aunt and uncle from Texas came up to help, and our friends and neighbors were constantly bringing in these wooden care baskets full of food that seemed endless. Mom couldn't sleep by herself. I couldn't sleep by myself. Mom cried everyday. I held her everyday. I didn't cry about it.  A few weeks later I had a dream about Howard. In the dream I woke up and it felt like the untouched quiet that usually swept over the house on an early Saturday morning. I could smell some food cooking in the kitchen. When I rounded the corner of the hallway I saw Howard standing over the gas-stove making breakfast. I ran towards him and I hugged him as tightly as I could. "Howard, I had the most awful dream in the world," I said to him. He turned to me looking confused and asked, ...

I took a class at UCO called "Psychology of Grief" during my junior year, Spring 2016. When I signed up for it I wasn't sure what to expect. I thought, 'maybe we will talk about how to grieve properly, maybe this could help me.' At that point in time I had become aware that it was my time to start looking inwardly on what I needed to do to confront all of these things that I still couldn't bear to think of. Mom was doing better. She had a new job and was involved with groups that helped her talk to other widows.  I, on the other hand, realized I was still using phrases like, 'My dad is gone' or 'He isn't here anymore' instead of calling it face value of what it was. He was dead. I remember in class when we talked about the euphemisms that are used to say the word 'dead' or 'death' or 'dying.' Here are a few just to jog some memories: Gone In heaven now Isn't here Pushing up daises At peace ...

Dear Dad, Today feels so incomplete without you.  There are no words for this kind of sadness. There is a bsolutely nothing at all.  Written: 12.25.13 ( 24 days after my father died) 

There were a couple of moments before my dad died that he would talk about what he wanted to happen after he died. He told me he wanted to be cremated and that he was adamant about not being displayed in an open casket in front of friends and family. He would say he wanted people to remember him alive, not dead. Three weeks before he died, he started talking about his death again. I didn't particularly enjoy talking about what would happen after he died, but this time I humored his discussion. Howard said that after he was cremated he wanted some of us in the family to scatter his ashes across the world. He said he would rather be in many places than just in the ground in the middle of Oklahoma. I remember thinking how unique this concept was. It got me thinking about what I wanted to happen to me after I died and why I felt so odd talking about it. I joked with him that I promised I would scatter his ashes anywhere I went, but I was only going to as an excuse to see ...

Dear Dad, You will miss my high school graduation today. I will sit in the rows of other excited seniors who are wondering what their futures will be like and I will wish that you were here. I always wish you were here. I suppose that is not a secret. I sometimes can’t bear the rush of inevitable sadness that shows its face when I least expect it. I’m only 18 but I feel so much older. I’ve changed in so many ways that I didn’t think I could. I don’t talk my head off, as you said I do. I don’t go out with my friends to the bookstore or to see a movie like I usually do.   I am sitting here, wishing that this day would be over so I don’t have to feel sad about it anymore. I wonder if there are others that will be graduating today that are missing one of their parents. Sometimes it’s comforting to think that I am not alone in this loss. I need your advice. I need you to be here for Mom. I need you to tell my brother that when people told him “you’re the man of ...