Embracing fatherhood after loss
At 16 years old I lost my dad suddenly whilst on holiday. Now, nearly 20 years on, I am still experiencing grief however, in a slightly new way after becoming a dad in May 2023.
I have recently returned from 3 months of paternity leave where my wife, daughter and I spent some time traveling overseas. It was an amazing experience, spending quality time together, we had the time of our lives. It was so special being there as my daughter reached key milestones in her development, such as sitting up, crawling, and now walking! She certainly is an active little one keeping us constantly on our toes!
While we were away, a good friend of ours asked a question completely out of the blue, “does Harry feel like it’s healing for him after losing his dad?”. Although it was nearly 20 years ago, this question caught me off guard. I had to stop and think hard about how I felt since having my daughter.
The resurgence of grief since I’ve become a dad:
Upon reflection, since having our daughter, I have realised I am experiencing grief in a new way, and I’m experiencing new feelings of grief and loss all over again. I felt I was missing my dad more than ever. I felt a big need and want for him to be around to meet our daughter. Then the other side of it is that I felt curious about wanting to know more about what he was like as a one year old. It brought a whole different way of thinking, and therefore, grieving.
It is strange at times, to feel grief at the same time as something so joyous like having a baby.
Having a new wave of grief, dealing with new emotions:
Having a child has added a new layer of grief. You’re grieving for not having your dad there but then also grieving because he's not there to be a grandparent to your child. Although he’s not physically with us, he’s still her grandpa, a new role he's inherited since my daughter has come along. It's so amazingly weird when I think about it, almost bittersweet. He is still her grandpa.
A massive moment for me was filling out cards to ‘guess the name, guess the weight game etc.’ before she was even born. My wife and I both wrote ‘mum and dad’ on the bottom of our cards, and I broke down in tears because it just hit me. I've never really written the word ‘dad’ in that way before. For such a happy and exciting moment, I felt a sigh of relief.
When I’ve ever needed to write the word ‘dad’ in the past, it’s always been an automatic sadness or trigger, and now it’s taken on a new meaning, a happy one… ‘Oh wow, I’m writing this for me now’.
I think having a baby makes you think about wanting to carry on certain memories that remind me of my dad. He was so devoted, he'd be on the side of the football pitch, and take us everywhere at the weekends.That's all that I want to do for our daughter.
Growing with grief and what it means to me:
Growing up with grief is the idea that your grief doesn’t get smaller, your life gets bigger around it. Meaning we adapt, grow and get stronger with the grief over time, compared to our grief getting smaller over time. As time goes by and as I experience more and more situations, I am able to strengthen my mechanism muscle to help manage it.
It’s easy to see reels, images, and theories all over Instagram, or online in general, and yet it’s hard to navigate through those because you find yourself comparing yourself to what you see online.
But this experience has made me think about what growing with grief means to me. I believe it is always good to think about what things mean to you as people define and feel things differently. For me, growing with grief is understanding when I’m starting to struggle and knowing the interventions I need to put in place to deal with this period of grief.
Grief comes in waves, and at times I struggle to manage it. Occasionally, it can feel crippling and overwhelming, despite this I have learnt to channel my grief into a positive energy and I do this through my daughter. Being completely raw, I want my dad to be here with us. No matter what. You learn to try to control those feelings of wanting them there so badly, and whilst it still makes me sad that he's not here, it helps me to put all my energy into my daughter on his behalf, in memory of him.
There are moments when I feel like I'm on top of this, and then I just get whacked out of nowhere. My daughter is nearly 1 and new triggers continue to pop up. When you have a baby, you don't have much time to process these triggers and your thoughts can linger for a long time. I remind myself to pull on the key things that I’ve put into place to help me through these moments, talking to people (friends or strangers), documenting how I feel, or talking to people who knew him as a person and a parent, like his friends.
What has helped me:
The main thing that helped was by opening up and talking through these feelings with my wife. This didn't come easy and for many years I bottled these feelings. Being honest to her about what I was feeling in that moment helped me to process my thoughts and move on quicker, rather than letting these thoughts manifest into a bigger ball of pain. It doesn’t mean these thoughts will be gone but I feel a little bit lighter having had the conversation.
2. Secondly, being inquisitive and asking my mum questions about my dad. She tells me little stories and things from when I was a little about how my dad used to be and how he parented us. It has been nice to learn more about the parent he was when I was a baby because when I was in the early stages, of losing him “in the trenches”, I was just trying to get through each day as it came. But remaining curious about him and sharing these memories of him in a new light is so uplifting.
3. Lastly, I journaled. When we were away on our travels (with more time to reflect on being a parent) my wife and I wrote short diary entries every day. There were days when I struggled and the journaling and writing with the thought that one day my daughter will read this, helped me be more vulnerable and honest.
Welcoming our daughter into the world brought back a lot of emotions that remind me of my dad’s absence. The grief has not and will not ever leave me, and has reemerged in different ways since becoming a father. Yet it has deepened my appreciation and love for him, and it has been beautiful to reflect on what he was like as a parent and how that will positively impact me.