My days are one of two things lately. Numb, or broken.

Numb means I am quiet, removed, unattached. It means I can go about what needs to be done and make progress on things. Numb enables me to tell people over and over… “My Dad died… it was very sudden… he was my best friend… he was only 63…” while shuffling back and forth from work to Merritt Island to the hospital where I talk to Mia about things that don’t matter and make really lame jokes at my own expense in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood in her room.

Broken means exactly what it sounds like it means. I can’t think or focus. I cry at the drop of a hat. The smallest amount of stress is enough to send me into a mini panic attack. I can’t believe all that remains of my Daddy is in this little 5lb black box on our shelf and I go between bouts of screaming, literally, for my Daddy while sobbing or just whispering “where did he go?”

So, I am not okay right now.

I also don’t really want to talk to anyone.

So far, the number of friends I will engage in text conversations can be counted on one hand. The only people I’ll actually speak to on the phone are my family, nurses, funeral home staff, or other people involved in getting my Dad’s assets taken care of.

The stages of grief are very real. I can try to describe how I’m feeling them but I don’t know if any words can do them justice…

• • Disbelief – I seriously cannot believe I exist in a world without my Daddy. I am in just complete and total disbelief at what has happened, that this is my life, that this is the hand he got dealt, that this is how things have ended for him. I simply cannot bring myself to believe it some days.

• • Shock – This is where the numbness comes from. His death still hasn’t set in. Some days I wake up and forget it happened or where I am (usually his house in Merritt Island, sleeping on his couch) and then I remember and am just shocked. Like, seriously? My Daddy died? While I was in San Fran on vacation? And *I* had him cremated and those are his ashes over there…? But… I wasn’t ready. No way is this real.

• • Anger – I’m talking pure hatred here. I see ancient people walking around and hate them for getting such a long life. I hear people talking about their Dads and hate them for still getting to talk about their Dad. I’m angry that the powers that be took MY Daddy. Which leads me to…

• • Resentment – This isn’t fair. He was all I had. I’ve said for so many years now that “I long ago accepted I got dealt a shitty hand with Moms, but God made up for it by giving me the most amazing Daddy ever.” And now he’s gone. It’s not fair. It’s fucked up. I fucking hate everyone and everything and every fate or deity or higher power that could have played any hand in having done this to us. He was my Daddy. He was my everything. Why would anyone take that away?!?!?! HOW?!? How could any higher power have done this to us? To him? He deserved SO MUCH MORE! He was TOO GOOD of a man to have had such a short life. THIS IS NOT FAIR!

• • Grief – This is what I call “heartbreak.” I seriously feel like my chest cavity has a hole in it… a big, black, EMPTY hole where my joy and zest for life previously lived… and the black hole spreading. Which leads me to…

• • Fear – I hurt so badly right now, and there is no end in sight. I’m actually afraid to love anyone anymore. Maybe that’s why I’m pulling away from my friends? I look at my Uncles and how much I love them, and how they are all I have left now, and I want to stop talking to them. I want to stop loving them. Because when this happens and they are taken from me I will have to go through this pain all over again and I can’t. I just can’t. I look at Vince and see how dependent I am on him and our love, our marriage, and I just want to run away and forget him. Because the day I lose him is the day all that is left of me will die. I am so afraid to love anyone right now… because in the end, they will die. And I will die a little too.

• Not alone – This is actually a surprise for me. I thought “no one can possibly understand this loss because no one can understand how important my Daddy was to me and how close we were and how he was all I had and all I ever needed.”  Even my siblings can’t understand. My relationship with my Daddy was unique and special and completely awesome.  But I went to work and people started telling me about losing a parent and I realized something: I am not alone. Yes, my relationship with my Daddy was unique and no, no one will ever understand the specifics of my loss. But there is something universal in the loss of a parent… when someone looks at me and can see the heartbreak and anger and exhaustion on my face, the total lack of hope in my eyes, and they say “I lost my Mom/Dad… I understand,” I believe them. Their pain might be different, but they know how deep it goes.

I can’t imagine having fun ever again. I wouldn’t even know how to start…. the simple fact is, when my Daddy died, a part of me died too. The young, naive girl I was, the one who saw the world as this amazing, wide-open space to play and laugh and love… that girl is gone. She was only able to feel that way because she had a Daddy who loved her, who she could call at any time about any thing… the girl I was lived and existed to make her Daddy proud.

I don’t have a Daddy now. I don’t know who I am anymore. The best, funniest, most honorable and upstanding man I knew who loved me better than any Daddy ever loved a daughter, better than anyone will ever love me again, is gone.

And I am not okay.