I went super direct with my title.

I’m not really sure what this is going to be. But it’s been another year — fifteen now — of my dad not being alive anymore, and I feel like writing about that. For myself so I can look back on it and glimpse my mind at this point in time. And maybe so someone else reading this will feel seen.

I haven’t published anything about this for *checks my archives* three years. It would be embarrassing if I missed a post somehow. Then again: who cares?

Actually, that’s the same question I’ve asked myself in years I both have and haven’t published something about his passing.

Some years, the fact that no one cares about this particular man’s death as much as loved ones and I do, practically speaking, overpowers any desire to memorialize him publicly.

Reasons pile up: Some things should be kept to ourselves. Grief and death make people squirm. Or also, tragedies abound these days. And there’s certainly not swipe-able dopamine in these personal essays. (“Essays?”)

There’s definitely also simply a bit of self-consciousness and therefore self-censoring. Personal essays have noble aims for sure, but by definition they are pieces of self-inquiry that can tip over into self-indulgence.

But they are also self-soothing and self-validating.

And so I keep writing them. And this year I’m putting it out here again, because something in my lizard brain feels like fifteen years calls for it. Round number, ooh.

In reality, every year is significant. Every year feels improbable or at least more bizarre than the one before. How is this reality? Is this the longest-running joke ever? Where are the hidden cameras?

All of that preamble is to remind you and me that there’s no rhyme or reason in grieving, just like there was no rhyme or reason for my dad dying.

That is something I’ve had to learn how to radically accept. Yes, I bitch(ed) and moan(ed) throughout the process. But the alternative was not being able to function anymore, and well, a gal’s 401(k) will not fund itself. I think my dad, whose last words to me ended up being sharing his bank login info over the phone, would agree.

But my mom and I have, hopefully, helped fund a comfortable afterlife for him.

Joss paper we burned back in April for Qingming Festival

Now for the big reveal: this year I am allowing myself…a list. I have tried to fight the impulse, but I have finally radically accepted that I am not unique, and sometimes the simplest format works. Also, I use lists to run every other part of my life, so why not?

Fifteen Learnings in the Fifteen Years Since My Dad Died

  1. Health above all. Health above all. Health above all.
  2. (Stolen from a friend) Don’t let the ones who leave discount the ones who’ve stayed.
  3. It’s a good idea to hope and believe that I have yet to meet even more “favorite people.”
  4. He — not my dad! — wanted me to wear more makeup. I should’ve kicked him to the curb.
  5. What and who I love will change. I have to go with the current, and also remember that the end may not be the end.
  6. It’s fun to buy mementos or souvenirs like concert T-shirts, but my mom was right. Where will everything go eventually?
  7. I’m really scared to suck at something, but it’s the only way to improve.
  8. Reclaiming my brain from the “infinite scroll” that is social media, shopping websites, etc. will be an ongoing challenge.
  9. Strength training has solved so many of my problems.
  10. Repetition, rehearsal, practice. For everything. There is no replacement.
  11. I need to resist the impulse to be everything. I can’t be.
  12. I tend to hang on too long. But it has its benefits sometimes.
  13. Some days, just writing a sentence, plucking a string, walking a block counts.
  14. I really grew with grief, not around it or past it.
  15. I thought I wouldn’t survive that thing or that thing (or that thing), but I did. And I’ll have to keep doing it. I can.

I thought this blog post would be “better,” which is silly. No one’s grading me.

On to the next year…