One Year Gone

July 11th marked one year since my father quickly passed away from colon cancer. I wanted to have this post go up on the anniversary, but I wasn’t quite ready to write about it then.

The weeks leading up to the anniversary of his passing were the hardest. In many ways, the lead-up is always harder than the actual date. The lead-up to his birthday (April 17th), the lead-up to Father’s Day and then the lead-up to the anniversary of when I got that call. I was driving home from the hospital, having just left him and praying for a miracle when she called to tell me.

No one ever forgets that call and I still feel soccer punched when I think about it.

Yesterday, I was going through one of my drawers when I spotted his very organized checkbook under a pile of tax documents. After his apartment was cleaned out, my mom came over and dropped off some of his things. The checkbook was one of them and I just sat there and cried over his handwriting and how perfectly balanced it was. My father was the most organized, meticulous and punctual man – everything I am not.

I have all of his voicemails saved, yet I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to listen to any of them without breaking down. Not that breaking down is a bad thing. The last year has taught me that it’s actually quite necessary to just let it out because it’s imperative for the  healing process. Yet the thought of hearing his deep voice (he had a voice that was made for movies), without him actually being here is still too much for me. Maybe one day, but I’m not quite there.

I have yet to go back to The Rockaways in Queens, where I grew up and where he lived since he immigrated to the US from Moscow, Queens.

When you lose someone, you’ll often hear that grief is like a wave. It comes and goes and you never know when it will just knock you off your feet. No truer words have ever been spoken. There are days where I feel great and then I’ll spot something that reminds me of him and I’ll break down, whether quietly to myself (that happens a lot) or over dinner with my loved ones.

But I write this to say that it’s not all bad. Yes, losing him during Covid has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with, However, his death also changed me as a person and not in a bad way.

I think about his full-of-spirit, infectious energy and how it positively impacted the room he was in. If I could take a sliver of that and apply it to myself, I’m already a better human for it.

Losing him  made me realize how precious life is and to really live life with gusto, like he did.

It made me want to tell the people around me how much I care for them and love them.

It taught me the importance of practicing gratitude because man, I have so much to be grateful for. We all do. These days, I focus so much more on the good.

It taught me to let the little things go. Most of it is bullshit and I’d rather focus my energy on the good stuff.

It taught me to genuinely compliment people, to pay it forward, to smile a little more and to tip a little extra.

As a parent, he left me with something that is so engrained in my memory: one thing I so vividly remember about him is that whenever I walked into a room that he was in, he was always so ecstatic to see me. Like THRILLED TO SEE ME. He could be in an important meeting with 15 other people and I’d walk in and he would stop everything and say “LENACHKA” (my name in Russian) and just look so genuinely happy. If I could take anything away from how he parented and apply it to myself, it would be that. As child, it was the best feeling in the world. He always made me feel so loved and I didn’t even realize how much that would impact me and the ways I want to show up as a parent.

They say that after a loved one passes away, you start seeing signs of them, but only when you’re ready. Not everyone believes that kind of stuff, but I really do. Only in the last two months, I started seeing signs of him all over the place. I mentioned this on Instagram a few weeks ago, but it recently happened to me. I grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens in building 333 and I have the best memories from my years there. A few weeks ago, Keith and I were eating dinner when a woman walked into the restaurant. I just happened to glance right at her forearm where I spotted a small 333 tattoo staring right at me. On top of that,  I happened to google the meaning of 333. 

Shortly after he passed, I started (virtual) therapy which was so helpful, but then I  stopped and I really need to pick it back up. To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of the computer therapy thing, so now that things are returning back to normal, I’d love to actually have a face-to-face visit. I still have so many things to deal with and talking to a professional, even via a computer screen, did wonders.

Writing this post made me cry several times, but it was so needed.

If you’ve recently lost a parent, please know that things do get easier with time.

You can find my post on grief here.