Today is the anniversary of my father’s death. As of today, I have lived half my life without him.

I’m not writing this for sympathy or condolences, rather, I am writing to share what half a lifetime of trying to understand my grief has taught me.

A lot has happened in my family during the intervening years since my father’s death. There have been births, graduations, marriages, milestone birthdays, more births, and, alas, more death.

All of these events have helped me focus on being grateful for the people I’ve had and still have in my life and the simple joys that surround me. Searching for things to be grateful for was a defensive strategy at first, but, over time, practicing gratitude became a reflex.

Slowly I realized that all the self-ravaging I undertook in the name of grief didn’t improve a single circumstance or ameliorate a moment’s pain or sadness. Now when the emotional sea becomes too choppy, I change tack and set a course for gratitude.

Grief has the power to alter us, but not the means to determine the form that alteration takes. That’s up to us. And it’s not an easy choice to make. How do we move forward without feeling like we’re leaving our loved one behind? For my father, it’s by remembering that, because I carry him in my memory and my heart, he is always with me. That and I have one of his dimples, a need for progressive lenses, and his swagger.

I am smiling today because, for the first half of my life, I had the best father on earth. Then, from that moment on, I’ve had the best father in heaven. How lucky am I?

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If you are also missing someone, I recommend reading the following poem by Henry van Dyke. It has been a great comfort to me over the years.

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Gone From My Sight

by Henry van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
 
Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."
 
Gone where?
 
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side.

And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone," there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...

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