Day 55
The first time I entered my parents' house after my dad died, I didn’t feel it. There was only the mess of emergency medical equipment, the stale, old, cluttered scent it always had, and my pain.
The second time I entered my parents' house, it was full of _____. There isn’t a word for it. That feeling when a room is full of the feeling that something is missing. It sat somewhere between anticipating his presence and steeling yourself for his absence. Where you know the image is incomplete, and you also know that there isn’t a way to finish it without a person. Some people might call that feeling nothingness, but for me, it feels bigger than that, more complex.
My first desire when I was in the room he died in was to move everything. Throw out the entire hoard he had encased himself in and move the furniture. I wanted to make the space a new one so that my mind wouldn’t be able to place him in it anymore. I didn’t want to pass through the doorway and have my eyes swing over to his empty chair. I didn’t want to face the after-image burned into my eyes of him there, in that spot. And I knew my mother would be feeling the same.
A year later, the house looks much different. Still full of too many things. Still covered in marks of him, but changed. Changed just enough that you don’t hear him in the kitchen making himself a bowl of cereal. You don’t see him stretch out in his La-Z-Boy reading book after book, Mash chiming from the television. It doesn’t feel like a different home, but our eyes don't insert him where he isn’t anymore. They’ve adjusted.
That feeling of missing him is still there. That void of his absence, felt every time my mother walks through the door to darkness and quiet. It’s still there when I think of Lord of the Rings or when my washer isn’t working right. It’s there when my sister isn’t sure how her insurance works or when my brother moves into his first full-time job. That feeling of missing him isn’t gone. But the rooms are no longer full of _____, and that is something.
Photo by Lukas Kaufmann on Unsplash
Hey, thanks for coming to day 57 of 200 days of writing.
I definitely wasn't planning to write anything about grief today. But as I was doomscrolling online, I saw a video from a creator named Jonny Thomson a.k.a. - philosophyminis, talking about Sartre and his idea of absence and missing someone. I have not read anything by Sartre, but this is the second time a very influential video about one of Sartre's writings has come across my path and led me to some very deep inner work. I think I will be picking up some of his stuff soon.
I recommend following Jonny Thomson if you don't already; he makes these really nice, digestible videos about philosophical topics.
I like this piece, though. It was something that needed to come out. A piece about the pain and the missing without having to touch the anger. I feel like in the bit of writing I have done about my grief, anger has been a large feature. I like seeing it's abcense here.
I hope you are having a good writing day. I will see you all tomorrow.
And pick up some Sartre or search up Jonny Thomson.
bybye
