The 16th anniversary of my Dad’s death was last week. It may seem like a random number, but I was 16 years old when he passed away and I am 32 now. I had been building this year up in my head for at least a decade. “That will be the most difficult year to deal with,” I told myself. Perhaps I did not notice that I had not been coping well with the loss even at that time. I tended to bury myself away and let my feelings bubble to the surface only rarely in moments of bitter solitude.
The threshold has now passed, and Dad has been gone for a longer period of time than I originally got to spend with him. With help, I am now able to view things in a new light and cope in a more skillful way. This dreaded event was not so dreadful after all.
I wrote this poem in April 2019.
