I didn't know this at the time, but the books I've read in 2025 have been preparing me for my father's death. Over the past year, my mind and heart have been preoccupied with many things: understanding how humans think, feel, and make decisions; love, relationships, and connection; what it means to design a good life and do meaningful work in the face of mortality and uncertainty. All concepts too relevant to where I find myself right now.
It's not easy to understand and accept that someone is gone. This is grief. It is not simply sadness, or anger, or regret, or confusion.
Grief is love.
But it's love that has nowhere to go.
Moving through grief requires re-mapping our attachment to a person across three different dimensions: space, which is where a person physically exists; time, which is when you expect to see them next; and closeness, which represents the emotional depth and reliance you have on your relationship with them. Grieving requires that we throw out the old map we've used to navigate our world as it relates to this person in space and time. Maintaining our emotional closeness to the person is still possible, despite their absence. Grief never ends, and it is a natural response to loss.
My current mapping of space and time with my dad mostly consists of memories from my childhood. Early mornings, where I could expect to find him in the kitchen, drinking his coffee in solitude. Afternoons, where I would wait outside to hear the acceleration of his Jeep's engine from blocks away, signaling his arrival home from work. Evenings, where I could find him reading a literary novel (or a book on mathematics, philosophy, or history) in his chair. December was my favorite time of year, since I always knew my dad would bring home an overwhelming amount of small trinkets, cookies, and candies from the people on his postal route.
And then there are the little things I can see, hear, and feel. Seeing him run the blow dryer longer than necessary to perfect his hair. Tasting his delicious burgers layered with split hot dogs on a hot summer day. Hearing the way he softly sighed when he was focused, with his upper lip tucked into his lower lip, his exhale moving up and over. Feeling his hand in mine as we all took turns keeping vigil during his final days.
My dad was quiet, intelligent, grounded, and warm-hearted. He found comfort in simple routines, connected genuinely with others, and expressed love through small, thoughtful gestures. Although my sense of space and time has fractured, I am finding some comfort in the memories I have of him.
In the book, A General Theory of Love, psychologists Lewis, Amini, and Lannon state that "Long-standing togetherness writes permanent changes into a brain's open book. In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes the other…" so that:
"Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love."
Knowing this helps me stay close to my dad, even in death. His love and influence on me and my love for him have shaped me into the woman I am today. I am my father's daughter, and I carry him with me.
Read by my daughter at the close of the service:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
— Robert Frost