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Grief Doesn't Get Smaller. You Grow Around It. · You're Not Too Much

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There's that saying that all roads lead to Rome.
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Everything takes you back to the same thing basically.
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And in my life, all roads basically lead back to my dad.
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If there's something annoying I do, it probably came from him.
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If there's something good I do, it probably came in some version from him.
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I'm really good at business, but I'm really good at business because
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he was abhorrent at business, and I learned how to be good at business from
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watching him be absolutely the worst business person who has ever existed.
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And, like, I literally had to take over his business, running his business, his
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practice, when I was 21 years old 'cause I was like, "This is a mess and this is
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not how you're supposed to do anything."
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I had no idea what I was doing, but even having no idea what I was doing, I still
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knew more than he did. And I certainly had better instincts about it than he did.
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He was just the worst businessman.
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Anyway, best doctor I've ever met though, by a margin of a lot, and I
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don't just say that 'cause he was my dad.
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He really was just an exceptional, incredible doctor.
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And sometimes those two things just don't work together.
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Like, sometimes you can't, you can't be an exceptional caretaker
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and also care about going to 16 minutes on a 15-minute session.
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It just, like, it just doesn't work that way.
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I got my sense of humor from him.
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If you wanna know I make a lot of dead dad jokes, and, and those are never
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going away, but, like, I made those jokes to my dad when he was alive.
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So, like, at some point they were live dad jokes. We used to tell him all the
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time that if he ever died, we were just gonna reanimate him and do, like, urgent
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care at Bernie's, 'cause we were running an urgent care at the time and just,
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like, and just, like, put strings on him.
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Mind you, he was a psychiatrist, so he talked to a lot of people who
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were grieving someone, and if you ever told him that someone you cared
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about died or if you said, "Oh, I lost my mother," he would say, "Well,
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that was careless," like, instantly.
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Like, there was no delay.
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"That was careless." On the back of my desk, there's a bottle that it's an
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empty glass bottle that says, "Expert Opinions." He bought the bottles at
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the dollar store, and he put the labels on them because they made him laugh.
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The other one said, "Up doc," so that when people walked into his office,
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they would see the bottle that said "Up doc," and say, "What's up, doc?"
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And he'd go, "Not much. How about you?"
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And giggle to himself uncontrollably.
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So if you wanna know how I got like this, I came by it honestly.
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There was no hope for me.
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He and I were, were two peas in an inseparable pod, and
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all roads lead to the old guy.
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But I say all of that because August 21st, he will be gone for 10 years, which
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feels like an impossible amount of time.
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And you know how you build, like, these things up in your head, and
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they don't actually mean anything, but somehow they mean something?
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And I remember right after he died thinking, "There's no way that we
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will ever reach a point where I can say that he's been gone for 10 years.
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That's impossible.
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That can't happen.
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I can't have been a person for 10 years without him." Except I'm here, 10 years
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without him, and I have a 10-year-old who was six weeks old 10 years ago. She
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had six weeks with him. Just to, like, add a finer point to that, she was six weeks
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early. Funny how the universe works.
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But yeah, we're sitting here.
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Somehow 10 years has passed, and there's this idea that, like, grief goes away.
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You survive grief, you get to the other side of grief.
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There's no other side of grief.
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It doesn't end.
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It doesn't stop.
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Some days it might as well be the day it happened.
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Some days are worse.
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When, when something like that happens, even if you knew it was coming,
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the shock of it shields you from a lot of what you're supposed to be
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feeling or what you could be feeling.
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And so the day or two after, at least this was my experience, it wasn't
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this, like, deluge of uncontrollable emotions, even though it was really hard.
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I didn't… I just remember, like, feeling like I was outside
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of my body the whole time.
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Like, not knowing, not knowing how I was supposed to process
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through this and, like, just having to remind myself constantly.
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There was, um… We were trying to do something for his memorial.
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I don't remember what we were trying to do, but there was a place in France
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that was his favorite place in the world, and every time I thought of it,
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I wanted to say the Champs-Élysées, but that's not what it was.
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There was another place that had a similar name, and I could never remember
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it when— unless he had just said it.
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And so we were trying to incorporate it into something, I don't even
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remember what, and, I just remember being like, "Oh, well let me ask
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him." Funny story, you can't do that.
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And then, like, just weird stuff that happened, like I had left the house,
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and it was the first time that I had truly been by myself the whole time.
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So no baby with me, no husband, I'm going to go get food for everybody.
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My best friend was here from out of town and he was literally only there for, like,
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16 hours to do a quick turnaround, and it was like right before the funeral.
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And I was driving to, I think I was going to Wendy's to get everybody dinner.
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And I was just talking to him, and I was just like, "I don't know if anybody's
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gonna hear this, but I'm by myself in the car, and I don't know what else to
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do with the airspace that I have, so I'm just gonna talk to you." And so I just was
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like, "I just wanna know where you are.
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I just wanna know that you're okay.
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If somebody could send anything to let me know, that'd be great." And so I had
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been using voice-to-text on my phone to coordinate one of my friends getting
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airfare to come down for the funeral.
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And so I did that, sent the message, put my phone down, drove, got the food,
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came back, picked my phone up again.
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And in the box where I, where you're supposed to either, like, speak into
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the phone or, or text into the phone, it said, "Hey, do you have a second?"
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That is the way my dad started every phone call.
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If you answered the phone, he would say, "Hey, do you have a second?" Every time.
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I didn't type that.
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I didn't call that.
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I didn't say it into my phone.
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It was just there in the box.
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And I am not a big believer in, like, woo-woo afterlife stuff, but that
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was about as clear as you could get that he was like, "I'm good.
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I got this." And he's probably sent me, or I choose to believe he
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has sent me 20 different messages.
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More than that, way more than that in the 10 years since he's been gone.
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And I don't know how it's been 10 years, but I also know that I don't
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feel any different about him today than I did the day he died or the
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day after he died or the day before he died when I was terrified that
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he was about to die because he was.
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Spoiler, he was.
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My grief is not smaller.
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I've just grown around it.
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I have a much bigger life because life has gone on, and he's still
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at the middle of it, but the life around him is still so much bigger.
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Is, is so much bigger so that it doesn't take up as much of my brain.
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But I still think about him every day.
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I still talk about him all the time like he's here.
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He's still integral to, like, every decision I make.
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I can still hear the things he says in my brain as responses to stuff all the time.
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And somehow he's been gone for 10 years, but he hasn't left.
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He's still right here.
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He still drives me fricking crazy.
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Just because I think that's what parents are supposed to do, right?
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I don't know how it's been 10 years.
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I can't… I both remember every part of the last 10 years in excruciating detail,
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and I also can't believe we've come this far, had this much, done this many things.
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I can't believe there's so much he hasn't been here for.
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I can't believe he never got to meet my youngest.
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She would be his favorite person.
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Not that my oldest would not also be his favorite person, but my youngest
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has, like, a certain murderous streak in her that he really would've loved.
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He would've— That would've been, like, his favorite thing in the world.
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It, it's just wild to kind of wrap your brain around having come so far and yet
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feeling like some things just have never changed, and it's never gonna change.
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He's… I'm gonna miss him every day for the rest of my life.
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I'll leave you with a story that
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perfectly explains my relationship with my dad and how my children are so much
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like him, despite the fact that they really never got any time with him.
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And also it's just hella funny.
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I'm gonna tell this story for the rest of my life 'cause it's that funny.
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So I was… We've been spending a lot of time at my mom's house, who lives
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only a couple of blocks away from me because she's been sick and we've been
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taking care of her, et cetera, et cetera.
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And so I took my youngest over to see her 'cause I, I don't know if
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I had to take the garbage out or something, but it was a quick trip,
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and she saw something of my dad's in the house and had asked a question
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about him that my mom had answered.
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And then as we left, she said, "Mom, I meant to ask you while we were
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there, what was Pop Pop's real name?"
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And I said, "Uh, his name was Lawrence Benjamin Ehrlich."
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And she goes, "Lawrence?
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Is that why you're named Lauren?" And I said, "No, not actually.
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My mom just really liked the name.
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"Jewish people don't usually"—at least our kind of Jewish people, I didn't
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explain to her the difference—"but don't usually name people after living people.
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We only name people after people who have already died." And she
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goes, straight-faced, "So if you wanna name somebody after someone
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living, you have to kill them?"
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And I went…
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"No, baby."
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And I was trying so hard not to laugh at her, but I was dying inside.
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I went, "No, baby, you just, like, pick a different name." And she
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goes, "Oh, that's probably better."
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And I was just imagining my mom just, like, shanking my dad 'cause she
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wanted to name me Lauren, and that would've fit their relationship,
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but also not the way it worked.
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So anyway, we have my youngest's seal of approval to just pick a different
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name if we don't wanna do a murder.
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Though she did seem fairly on board for the murder, which is her whole vibe, and
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goes back to what I said earlier about how much she would've loved this fricking kid.
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But yeah, somehow it's been 10 years and he doesn't get to see moments
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like that, and that fricking sucks.
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But also, it only sucks because it was cool to have him around for
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as long as we did, and here's to a long time more of missing him.
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Actually, it'd be kind of cool not to miss him.
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I wish I could wake up one day and just be like, "I don't like that guy,"
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and then not have that to think about.
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But it's kind of the bad part of having a parent who's really cool and your,
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your other half in this life is that sometimes they're gonna be super fricking
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rude and die, and then you have to, like, figure out what to do with the
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rest of your life, and that's bullshit.
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But we've done an okay job of it.