The short answer to why I haven’t written is grief. Obviously, I guess. Lately, grief has felt a bit like a large box in the middle of the room that I keep meaning to move but never get around to addressing, so instead I stub my toes on it ten times a day. It’s there, it’s lurking, it’s present. But it’s also my own lack of direct address that makes it so.

In some ways, the last month has been the easy mode of grief. When my dad died, I was on a plane within twelve hours of receiving the news, child in tow. We spent a month at home, and I looked after my mum as best I could and parented my kiddo as best I could and tried to knock things off the enormous post-death checklist as best I could and checked in occasionally at work as best I could. In short, I distracted myself.

After an epic 25-hour travel day (thanks, global pandemic), I got home to this home — do other adult humans refer to more than one space as home, or is that just me? — and I handed off kiddo to my husband and they went off for an afternoon adventure of haircuts and dance class and suddenly I was faced with the horrifying reality that, no longer distracted, I would have to feel my feelings.

Absolute bullshit.

I can feel myself beginning to unravel, and I think the truth of the last week is that I am not so emotionally stunted that I didn’t know this was eventually coming. I’ve been tired, and I’ve been intentionally tiring myself out to keep from having to grieve too profoundly, too deeply. And writing taps into all the same introspective parts of the self. So too tired to grieve was also too tired to write. And here we are.

I am back at my desk today in a formal capacity; back to writing and thinking and trying to do brain work. But I also recognize that I need to not use that as another form of distraction and escape. What is the balance?

I’ve recently apparently become a Person Who Orders Books About Grief after a lifetime of eschewing self-help as a genre (I once quit a book club because they made us read Untamed by Glennon Doyle and everyone loved it and I hated its story of wealthy white lady problems so profoundly that I knew these could never be my people), so I guess it’s new frontiers all around. I am currently reading It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand by Megan Devine and The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss by George A. Bonanno. Will report back.

I actually planned out this whole month of blogging ages ago and so I have lots of topics that aren’t my dead dad to talk about. I really hope to get to them. But I’m also grateful for this space to process and reflect. And grieve. It’s so hard to grieve. No one tells you that part: just the feeling of feelings, the space for sadness, is so hard to allow yourself to undertake. I think, for me, this part starts now.

Today is three weeks. On a podcast I was listening to the other day, one of the hosts said that the thing he has noticed about experiences of grief is that somewhere around the three-to-four weeks point, people stop asking about the grief thing. There’s a sense that it’s time to talk about other things or to get back to some kind of normal. And if there’s one thing that the pandemic taught me, it’s how many people I share a society with who love an ill-advised and premature return to normal.

I do not feel normal. I barely feel human.

It’s true though, about the need for normal creeping back in and the people starting to fall away. By the week three point, the meals and visits have abated and the steady flow of cards has reduced somewhat and at first, to be honest, it’s a bit of a relief, because all those things are really, truly difficult to process and engage with in a way that feels meaningful. But then it sinks in that people on the outer circles of your life are kind of done with the grieving thing, and it feels a bit like the circles are going to keep falling away from here on out until it’s just, you know. You.

A few days after Dad’s death, someone called and asked how I was and when I reflexively said, “I’m okay,” they said, “No. You’re not. How can you be?” And that is both true and also, whew, a whole lot to come back at someone with when they’re emotionally unstable. Sometimes an “okay” is less an “okay” and more a finger in the emotional dam, just trying to hold back the floods, you know? Let me repress in peace.

When people ask how I’m doing now I mostly just tell them that everything sucks, but then I kind of laugh, like, “Everything sucks but what can you do, I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable.” Today I went to a bunch of meetings for the first time with people who largely don’t already know, and I didn’t tell them, and the whole thing made me feel dissociated and weird. But also it feels like a weird piece of news to bring to the cold intros on a Teams call, you know? “Fun fact about me: my dad is dead and I’m not keeping it together. Now who is going to screen share today?”

The physicality of grief is not new to me, but it’s different. My most recent experiences of grief came from a series of miscarriages, so the physicality of that grief was not a surprise; it’s wrapped up in the physical experience itself. But this grief is very physical too. I’m tired, but it’s more than that — I am tired in my bones. Existentially tired. My brain wanders; focus is difficult. Sometimes I’m not hungry and other times I feel like I can never eat enough. All the places I carry stress — my lower back, my shoulders — are screaming. There is not enough sleep in the history of consciousness, and also I wake up every hour just because I do.

Three weeks.

I am in no rush to get to normalcy. The idea of it ever feeling normal for my dad to not be here makes me wince. The world will come for me and I am trying to re-engage with the world. But none of it feels fair or right or reasonable. None of it feels normal.

How are you?

Pretty shitty.

Hope that’s okay.

I’m not doing a good job. I’m mostly just cutting everything back and raking everything out and hoping for the best — and hoping I am not killing anything. But it feels like doing something, which is a pretty powerful drug these days.

I’m thinking a lot, as I do this, about the kinds of jobs my dad always did and how much I didn’t pay attention. I don’t know how to bait a mousetrap (thanks, YouTube) and I don’t know how to use a pruning saw (but I know now I was doing it backwards for at least the first part of Friday). All these things I never attended to, because Dad was either there and just doing it, or on the end of the phone to ask for help when I needed it. His absence is palpable. We haven’t picked snow tires yet this year. Who are we going to run that by? Or oh god, what about when we have to buy our next car? Who do I call next time I need to reformat my Mac? And why did I never pay attention to the mousetraps?

We are experiencing unseasonably warm weather here and while normally a 24 degree (Celsius — I don’t know what that is in weirdo temperature) in November would fill me with existential dread, I’m struck by how lovely the weather has been here — pretty much non-stop — since the day after Dad died. There is so much to do and so much to learn and it’s nice to think that Dad didn’t want me to also be cold and miserable while I gnawed at the trees with a backwards pruning saw (I eventually figured it out.)

On Friday, when I was in the garden pulling out some rogue blackberry bushes that had grown roots at both ends (sorry, is that a thing?), I realized that the AirPod that had been in my pocket was now… not. As often when I am working on a task with one part of my brain and parenting with the other, I had one earbud in on the side mostly to the garden, and one earbud out on the side mostly to where my five-year-old was playing. But the other AirPod was… gone. I searched everywhere, but between the leaves and the loose soil and my pile of debris, I gave the whole thing up for lost. As I lay in bed Friday night, I idly Googled the cost of a single replacement AirPod and gently choked on it as I drifted off to sleep, listening to the rain surely drowning my poor beleaguered AirPod in its garden grave.

Something to know about my dad is that he was an Apple fanatic. Like, since the start. My first computer that was mine-all-mine and not a family hand-me-down (in 1996 or so) was a Mac Color Classic that someone at Dad’s work was getting rid of after getting a Performa. Oh, how I adored that computer. From that point on, Dad had Macs and I had his old Macs. I was thinking about that as I searched for my AirPod: “Well, maybe this gorgeous weather has nothing to do with Dad, because Dad would not be involved in my losing an AirPod!”

On Saturday, finally finishing raking out that section of the garden, I looked down and saw… my AirPod. Perfectly protected from the rain overnight by the pile of leaves I hadn’t moved. It’s perfectly functional and somehow still clean and looking like new. Magical. Miracle. Dad?

Two theories: one, Dad saw the cost of the single replacement AirPod and was absolutely not having it; or two, he wasn’t going to let me have my AirPod back until I got out there and finished the job.

The job is done now for another year, Dad. I’m not sure I’ll get used to doing Dad Jobs, though I’ll try to muddle through them all as best I can. The dog doesn’t like the way I make his breakfast and I never remember to clean your grandson’s water bottle as carefully as you did. Every day I find a new way you are missed.

But thanks for finding my AirPod.

Two. The worst part is telling people and the only worse worst thing is finding out too late that the person you’re talking to doesn’t already know. You will suddenly understand why everyone used to care about the obituary pages so much and you will wish you had a QR code on your forehead that people could scan for the necessary information.

Three. Being alone with your thoughts is overrated at the best of times but it really sucks when you’re grieving. Consider having one AirPod playing a fatuous podcast at a barely-perceptible volume at almost all times that you are alone. That way, you can learn about the history of birth certificates or the role of the gold standard or something instead of thinking about how the worst thing that ever happened to you has now happened and you will be forever changed. Because that is a real bummer.

Four. This is for those on the periphery of grief: when you deliver food to a grieving person (and you should), consider three things: portion, timing, and vessel. First, the portion should be proportionate to the size of the grieving family. Second, everyone will deliver food in the first two-three days and then never again, so consider waiting until week two or three for a visit (but maybe don’t plan for a visit-visit — a drop and run is an underappreciated gift on its own). The first and second point are interrelated (I have spent more time in a tetris game with our tiny freezer and/or intercepting deliveries than doing anything else). And finally, package your thoughtful and generous gift up in something disposable. I am sorry Mother Earth, but this is one thing you need just take on the chin. The washing and returning of vessels is a lot, my people. A lot.

Five. Also for my periphery peeps: don’t compare your grief. Even if you think the situation is so utterly similar to your own. Even if it is literally the exact same series of facts on paper. Death is simultaneously the great equalizer and a totally unique experience for each of us. When you tell someone in mourning that you know exactly how they feel, you risk making them feel erased in their most vulnerable moment. So just don’t do it. Save that for your group chat.

A corollary to five that is very important: this is not just like a thing that happened that wasn’t the death of a beloved person. It just isn’t. I know how much you loved that vase. I do. I beg you to stop talking.

Six. Whatever relationship you had to eating and caring for yourself before, it’s fucked up now. Sorry.

Seven. You will maybe be surprised to know that the dog is as sad as he is. The dog is so, so sad. The dog is incomprehensibly sad and the whole family is engaged in a project of distracting the dog. When the dog is distracted, he is himself. When he is not distracted, he is sad. Distracting the dog distracts us, too. This might be his MO.

Eight. You, unfortunately, are not a dog, and thus distraction can only work so well for so long. Eventually, you’ll need to do the work of processing this immeasurable loss. You can feel that need the way you feel something in your peripheral vision before you know for sure it’s there. Present and not-present. Schroedinger’s emotional labour. It’s not clear what this process will look like or when it will come. It feels like there might need to be guacamole? Or gin? The details are hazy. It’s coming, though — both a promise and a threat. But not, like, now. Now is still the time for distraction.

Nine. You can’t predict when you will dissolve. A song lyric. A line in a news story. A bird you don’t know the name of but he would. Other people being kind is the worst, and the least predictable. And then over and over and over again: that feeling that you should text him about this moment, send this picture, remember this for the next FaceTime. That recipe he would have loved to try. That person who would have made him roll his eyes. That overriding sense that there will be so many things — big and small and significant and foolish — that you want to share and a missing person to share them with.

Ten. You’re in this for the long haul.

The benefits of this, it seems to me, would be many. I love a creative constraint and I love a goal. I have felt my thinking stagnate over the past few years, as the pandemic sameness of my still-cloistered life takes its toll. I would like to think a little bit about a bunch of stuff and see what gets me excited — lately, the idea of penning a conference proposal gives me hives, which is partly because I can’t imagine attending an in-person conference in a pandemic and everyone is rushing back to in-person, and partly because my thinking is so slow. The agility of my previous writerly self is gone and I wonder what will come next.

Anyway, it all seemed like an awfully good idea, and then, on October 19th, my dad died suddenly.

I am unmoored.

I’ll share here an excerpt of the obituary I wrote for my dad — how is that even a real thing I had to do? — because sharing who he is — was, but also is — helps.

Robert Gray of Merrickville passed suddenly at home on 19 October 2022.

Bob, as he was best known to his friends, was a true and eclectic autodidact — equally comfortable plumbing and wiring a heritage home, discussing the great theorists of psychology, or tinkering with and reviving any Apple product. His knowledge was far-ranging and he delighted in opportunities to share it with people he in turn could learn from, ideally while also sharing a laugh. Bob was known for his quick and sardonic wit that outshone his sometimes curmudgeonly first impression. He loved supporting music as much as he loved listening to it, whether at the pub or dragging gear across Eastern Ontario, roads he knew so well from years spent rallying with Gill as his navigator. He was most in his element before a classroom of undergraduates; ankle-deep in the cold waters of Bay of Fundy; on the race tracks of Mosport, St. Jovite, and NASCAR; or puttering in his garden with his constant companion, Kushie.

He leaves an absence that will be felt most acutely on Formula One racing Sundays; his favourite holiday, Groundhog Day; or anytime politics and life are being discussed.

You would have enjoyed him.

Anyway, the idea of picking up the writing plan seemed impossible. It still does, honestly. I feel like I am moving through molasses all the time.

But.

My dad was the number one supporter of my public scholarship. He also loved old-school blogging. I remember that the website he ran off a server in his office for all of the 1990s and most of the 2000s was called “autodidactics in action.” He provided me with my first access to computers in 1988 and my first email address in the early 90s. He signed me up for computer camps as a tween. When I got my first paid blogging gig at the launch of Book Riot in 2011, he read every word (even the ones he vehemently disagreed with). When I put my tenure portfolio on the open web pre-adjudication, no one was prouder — I know, because I know how hard he tried to explain it to people who had no idea what tenure or the open web meant.

Writing this post is impossible — tears streaming down my face as I do it — because the idea of writing words that Dad will never read feels impossible. Like writing his obituary, it is something that should be happening to someone else.

And yet at the same time, I know how if he was here and I launched this mini-project, he would read every single post — and subscribe to the RSS feed, and wade into the comments, and chat with other people there, and enjoy the participatory web as he always did. And that’s why I’m going to try to follow through.

The reality too is that Twitter is less usable every day under the new leadership, and recommitting to blogging feels like an empowered act. Dad would have liked that, too. Own your hosting; own your platform. That was his ethos before it was a movement.

I miss my dad. I also really miss writing. I can only have one, as it turns out, because this shit just is not fair. But I know he would like this project.

See you tomorrow?