Triggers

I am ill-prepared for the things that will set me off mentally to thinking about my Dad no longer being with us. Initially I thought that the ring of his that I now wear would be a trigger, but it's become something that is a reminder of his life and who he was. It does not make me sad or drop me into that place of missing him so much. Pictures are the same. They are around the house, I say hello to him every morning and every night, but again, it's a reminder of his life. It makes me feel more like everything is 'normal', that before place. I don't dwell on missing him, or his absence.

But then some song will come on the radio that reminds me of him, or of his relationship with my Mom, or some random thing that has nothing really to do with him, and I'm thrown immediately into a funk, into that place of acute missing. I wish I could identify what those triggers are so I could either a) put myself into immersion therapy or b) avoid them all entirely.

As a surviving family member, we have to find ways to carry on with our lives, but those triggers act almost as hidden traps. It is so easy to get lost in them when one shows up, and to let ourselves live in the past when everything was as I thought it should be. I don't actually know that it's a bad thing to let myself feel the loss acutely, but I know that it still takes my breath away and stops me in my tracks. He is not a phone call or plane ride away anymore. This thought most recently triggered by my new-to-me car having the same fake leather kind of wheel as the car he taught me how to drive on did.

A steering wheel left me sitting in a parking lot for ten minutes before I felt I was actually in control of myself enough to drive again.

This is part of the process. When those items or songs or events cause me to take a breath and be hit over the head with the knowledge, yet again, that my Dad is no longer with us, I sit in it and give myself permission to grieve. I also give myself permission to take the space to think about that trigger and use it to bring forward a happy memory, the reason the trigger might have existed in the first place. I give myself permission to let a heart-wrenching moment turn into a fond and grateful reliving of experience and memory.

So I suppose neither immersion or avoidance is my plan of attack. I will accept these triggers as they come as reminders of how lucky I am to have had a father that was so loving and kind that his absence is palpable to me. I will use these triggers as a reason to be grateful in my sadness.