Navigating a New Year
Even though it’s been a long time since my dad passed away, New Year still throws up a certain amount of pain and complications. I think, when you lose a parent at a relatively young age, you miss out on so much that others may take for granted. At a time when people are either enjoying returning to their childhood home or moaning about having to share a dinner table with their family; I’m usually counting the years since I was able to enjoy the festive period, without feeling the weight of loss.
Although this has got better with time, the ticking over of another new year is not something I think I’ll ever get used to.
I remember the first new year without my dad. It crept up on me, out of the storm of an extremely emotional Christmas for everyone. It hit me as midnight slipped by - the idea that the world had left him behind, carried on without him, felt so wrong; and I felt hugely guilty for being a part of it.
This set a foundation for how I was going to feel every New Year. Rather than just be one of those people who managed to ignore it, I somehow amplified my loss and guilt by convincing myself it would be better next year. I set a target I was never going to achieve.
From that point, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day always felt like something that symbolised an end for me, rather than a beginning. I would suffer huge depression; beat myself up for not feeling the joy others had felt at Christmas and for the fact that I had wasted another holiday. It often took me weeks to get over it. Then, once more I’d promise myself that I’d make that coming Christmas a special one. Rinse and repeat.
The problem for me was, that a new year was generally a time when people look forward, with a nod to the past – and both of these things held huge amounts of unresolved pain. Until I dealt with that pain, until I worked through the fears and complexities of what my dad’s death had done to me, none of this was going to stop. It’s easier said than done, dealing with grief is a huge step and it’s not just about fixing one thing. I came to realise that whilst I had no choice but to accept the change in my life, I hadn’t really looked at the changes it had brought about in me – I also didn’t have a clue where to start.
Communication was key. Finding people I could trust and being able to talk, sometimes not even about my dad. Grief finds its way into every area of your life, and it’s a master of disguise. It can hide in plain sight and it rarely reveals itself, even when it’s doing the most damage. So, no matter how much I convinced myself that the next new year was going to be different, it never was; not until I really knew why it affected me so much. My dad not being around was the cause of my pain, but the effect of his death on me wasn’t something I had ever examined. Once I did, once I realised the changes it had brought about in me, I learned how to cope. That was a big step.
From that point, I learned how to celebrate the future and the past, not always with a smile on my face, but I started to define myself as more than just the kid who lost his dad. It’s still not easy, every year is different; but it’s better - and that’s all we can ask for.